Stripped and invested
by katnassy
Summary: What if both our girls get what they crave so much – their normalcy, their faedom, acceptance? Would that make them happy or would that make a case of be careful what you wish for?
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Bo was desperately shaking the limp body willing it to draw a breath, to give a shudder. "Lauren!" her squeak was like a banshee wail to her own ears and she flinched at the unsolicited association, "No, you can't!" The brunette raised a thoroughly shaking hand and slapped the pale cheek, then the other one, then the first one again. She kept slapping until red tinged the porcelain skin and the human gave a strangled gasp that sounded like the name of the loved one "Bo."

Relieved into half-hysterical sobs, the succubus pressed her lover to her chest, whispering self-recriminations, cursing her own lack of self-control, damning her urges. "I've nearly killed you, Lauren," she stuttered through the wet sounds of crying, "One moment I was in control and in a flash I lost it. The succubus overcame me."

"You ARE the succubus," the blonde doctor whispered back, her voice still tremulous and weak but her need to soothe the woman she loved greater than her own pain, "We both know it and you have to accept it the way I do. I accept your nature, Bo, hear me, I do."

But Bo was shaking her head as vigorously as she had shaken her lover into consciousness a minute before. "Yes, the way you accept a tornado for the simple reason you can do nothing about it. I am dangerous for you, more dangerous than a tornado as I am so much closer," the brunette head dropped muffling her last words to the point of inaudibility, "I am still a monster".

Kenzi made a stormy entrance into the house, the house which they rightfully called the shack, so infinitely below the sumptuous residence of the Santiagos. A very disgruntled representative of that family was trudging behind her, launching time and again a soothing remark at the girl's resolute spine. The last attempt at reconciliation gained him the enface view of a livid Kenzi who suddenly stopped in the middle of what passed for their living room and turned to him her arms akimbo. "I get it, Hale, I am your girl-friend, you love me, your family are a bunch of arrogant snobs and you are nothing like them," she summarized his scrappy admonishments, "And I also saw your face when we were at the Santiagos and I got my usual dose of put-downs. You were brimming with pity with a dollop of indignation and a smudge of embarrassment and that smudge, Hale, that was a bit too much for me. I don't care for your pity but to cause you shame, even if it was a second worth of a knee jerk genetically imposed reaction?" Kenzi stopped for air and deflated at the sight of her boy-friend desperate expression.

"I am just so tired of being a human Cinderella," she whispered coming to rest her head against his jacketed shoulder. Hale looped a long arm around her tiny body and lowered his head ready to whisper into her ear the "I love you, Kenz. I have never been ashamed at you" spiel but Bo's far from subtle stomping downstairs broke the moment.

The succubus in her bright red kimono stilled at the foot of the crumbling stairs and waved a half-hearted hello at the couple. One look at her scrunched up face sent Kenzi flying out of the siren's embrace and straight to her bbf's side. "What gives, BoBo?" she intoned but there was so much more beneath the words, which the older woman had no difficulty to read for the besties' code it was.

"I didn't mean to ruin your moment," the succubus went on in the same code and the human girl beamed readily, "Me and Hale were saying nightie-nightie, see-you-when-I'm-less-pissed-at-you sweet nothings."

The siren covered his disappointed with a trademark broad smile and backed to the door. "Have a good gossip before going to bed, girls. And I'll see you, Kenz, tomorrow, and I do mean more than just see, mu girl," he was careful to stick to a light joking tone as he made it out of the shack.

As soon as the slightly unbalanced front door swung shut with a dull thump Bo flopped onto the couch like a deflated balloon closely followed by a much smaller and less shapely one of Kenzi.

"I almost killed her," the succubus muttered, tears threatening to make a re-appearance, "I nearly killed Lauren because I couldn't rein in my succubus when we were making love. And how was your day?"

"I screwed up royally at the dinner with Hale's family, his father called me an ignorant bad-mannered jumped-up human at the carefully calculated moment when I was supposed to be taking a bath-room break and I was actually eavesdropping. And you know what? I didn't hear a murmur of protest from Hale."

"Maybe he just knows when to save his breath?" Bo tentatively suggested.

"Saving breath is keeping it shut in my book. Hale started making excuses on my behalf. Troubled family background, difficult childhood, that's not her fault she's a human, that sort of thing," the raven-haired girl heaved a sigh, "But that pales in comparison. Back to you, bestie. Where's Lolo? Bed, emergency ward or body bag?"

"Bed, exhausted but alive, sleeping it off," the succubus grumbled, "One day I may well be the end of Lauren."

"But for now you are her joy," Kenzi countered, "My guess, she's more than aware of the risks and more than willing to take them."

Bo, however, was not that easily deflected by her overpowering grim line of thinking and she suddenly leaned forward to grab the other girl's arm, "I am lethal, Kenzi, lethal to anyone, except you and Dyson. You – as I never was attracted to you in that way…"

"A very sarcastic thanks from the not attractive enough here," the human girl cut in.

"And Dyson – cos he is as strong as I am and can stop me," the succubus went on, "So either I live the daily terror of killing Lauren or I let her go."

"Which is also a way of killing her," Kenzi mumbled not sure if she should be saying that loud enough for her friend to her.

"If only I could be normal," the words left Bo's mouth in a half-sob, "be human."

"Revise your definition of normal, sista," Kenzi sighed her own regrets running in quite the opposite direction, "I was just practically spat on for being that kind of normal."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Bo took another deep breath that stretched her already taxed lungs to a near-bursting point. "And after all is said there's only one way I can see of protecting you, Lauren, of protecting you from me," she ploughed on, "The only thing to do is for me not to get so close to you as to be dangerous. For us to split up." Her words lacked both conviction and any convincing power as she stumbled over them as if they were thorns scratching agonizingly at her throat on their way up.

"No Oscar for you," Kenzi singsonged with a dismissive handwave, "It's trite, badly delivered, plain hurtful. I'll spell it for you: L-a-m-e."

"Do you think there's an unhurtful, smooth way of saying something like this?" the succubus snapped.

"That's why we're rehearsing, silly," the human girl leaned forward in her seat to get hold of the bottle and top up her disastrously empty glass, "A rehearsed dumb move should be marginally better than a half-cocked dumb move."

Bo's eyes dove into her still unfinished glass, avoiding the transparent silver of her bestie's gaze. "I meant every word, Kenz, I don't want to kill the woman I love."

"And that's why you are letting go of her and of your chance to be happy. Clever!" the Russian knocked back the red liquid that was their poison of choice for the night.

"You as the relationship guidance counselor that's rich," the brunette grumbled, "cos your own relationship is such a sweet plain altar-bound sailing."

"That's a low blow," Kenzi pouted, "Admittedly, that's more of a sour bumpy ride, destination as yet undefined. Call me whimsical, but once in a while I just so wish Hale was a little more reckless, a little more impetuous. I wish he had it in him to throw a family heirloom candlestick into his father's thick head for a dig at me."

"Hale is a very good person, a person of integrity and he loves you," Bo put a consoling hand over her bestie's black-gloved little one, "And you seem to be trying to drive a wedge between him and what makes his world."

"Ok, I got it, I am a bitch," the younger girl shook her green-streaked hair in a defiant and not entirely sober motion, "But maybe he just needs to give me a nice timely slap for that and I would be more respectful of his values. Maybe I need him not to be so good and with so much integrity. This kind, gentle caring type is the bane of my love life. First Nate, now Hale."

"Sure, you were never blessed with a passionate overprotective jerky possessive lover that keeps doing things behind your back because he thinks that's for your own good to the point of giving up his heart to do the saving you could pretty much do yourself," the succubus vented with no small degree of bitterness.

"I seem to recognize the portrait, sweet tits, the complicated broody wolf of questionable moral fibre," Kenzi smirked back, "Maybe it's the wine talking or my nether regions doing the thinking but that is just what I'd call oh-hell-so sexy. And that sexy has just made his timely entrance."

Bo swiveled in her seat and almost spat back the mouthful of wine she had just taken at the sight of the tall figure making his way among the usual late-night Dal crowd of fae. Kenzi focused her short-sighted but stubbornly unbespectacled and drink-blurred eyes to follow his progress and did her own round of choking on her drink when she saw the siren behind the wolf's broad back.

"Ladies," Dyson smiled down at the girls seconds later, "Barging in on your private party?"

"You'll be forgiven for standing me and the other beauty here another bottle or two," Kenzi answered magnanimously, got up and made a couple of unsteady steps to execute a wobbly landing onto Hale's chest, slinging her arms around his neck.

"Haven't you had enough, Lil' Mumma?" the siren gave a reproachful sigh hugging his tipsy prize.

"Since when have you joined the wine police, detective?" Kenzi extricated herself from his arms with a sudden burst of strength, "Me and ma copine were talking matters of utmost importance, not to be tackled on an empty stomach."

"I hoped we could also talk," Hale gave her a cautious eyebrow wiggle, "I thought a lot about what you said and I wanted to clear the air between us, Kenz."

"I don't think that's the right moment, my wine fumes of a breath can cloud any air you'll manage to clear up," the petite girl swayed a bit exaggeratedly wondering to herself why she was so keen to put off what might well be an important talk with her boy-friend. "Unless you're about to go down on one knee and propose," she added after a second's focused consideration. The siren's face ran the gamut of emotions in the space of a few seconds before settling into a painfully confused expression.

"You know that it's not that easy," he murmured.

"Kneeling? Have you got arthritis?" the girl couldn't keep a hefty dose of snark from seeping into her tone.

"A marriage between a fae of my rank and a human would be unheard of and not only in terms of my father having a stroke," Hale's expression darkened still further, "I am talking about your safety, Kenz, about your life possibly. We need to be careful, not to rush things."

"Going by how many years it took you to come to terms with your feelings for me, I dread to think how much time it'll take you not to blush with embarrassment whenever I'm fae-spotted by your side," the girl was at her prickliest now. Deep down Kenzi knew Hale didn't deserve the tongue-lashing she was giving him but her own frustration and the sickening feeling of inadequateness coupled with the alcohol swirling through her system dulled her sense of justice and egged her on, "Oh, I almost forgot, you have time to spare on your hands, a fu-ducking eternity, it's just me the poor fragile human thing who has to worry about the first wrinkles."

With that partying shot she turned on her heels and crammed her skinny behind next to Bo's onto the seat only to see Dyson vacate the chair in front of them in a hurry. The two detectives beat a hasty retreat to the nearest pool table while the girls huddled together warmed by their misery and the bottle the wolf shifter had had time to get for them.

"I so screwed up, partner," Hale was the first to pour out his aching heart as soon as they were out of the girls' earshot, "With Kenzi I mean. I keep saying all the wrong things and don't know how to say what matters. And she's not exactly helping, either, her tongue is like a taser."

"She is a handful and a half but more than worth it, mate," the wolf commiserated, "Relationship is never easy, but you'll work it out."

"It's like saying you'll quit smoking, I believe in you, just as helpful," the siren muttered far from consoled, "While you're feeding me sympathetic platitudes, I am majorly freaking out."

"_You_ are freaking out? What about me then?" Dyson's face suddenly crinkled into a seamless mixture of appalled amazement and tentative excitement, "Bo was just seriously coming on to me while you were ballsing up with Kenzi."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"What the hell was that, sista?" Kenzi's little figure suddenly seemed to exude menacing disapproval, "You making eyes at Dyson and him scampering away like a rattled mouse from a mop-swinging housewife."

"I thought if I can't be trusted around Lauren, maybe I can make Dyson happy," Bo's speech was as drink-blurred as her ideas.

"In your present state you can't be trusted around another bottle, Bobo," Kenzi snatched the said item right from under the other woman's outstretched hand, "And when you sleep it off, I won't even need to tell you how dumb the idea is."

"Dyson loves me, I still have feelings for him. Simple maths," the succubus hiccupped into the drags in her glass, "I can bring the number of miserable people caught up in this shitstorm down by one. And as a fringe benefit, he's strong enough to keep me from hurting anyone else, himself included."

Kenzi flopped down onto her seat clutching the bottle to her chest as if it was a cuddly toy. She would be hard put to define, if only to herself, why Bo's reasoning riled her so much beside its obvious alcohol-born nature. The Russian girl attempted a brief moment of introspection and somehow the mere idea of Bo getting back with Dyson seemed less appealing then the mummified peanuts scattered on the floor under their feet.

"It just doesn't feel right, Bobo, not right at all," she murmured to her friend and shut out whatever thoughts she had glimpsed beneath that conclusion in her inner thinking process.

Hale's dropped jaw was back in place safe from dislocation. "She did what?!" his voice rose enthusiastically when he saw Dyson nod in affirmation of his last words, "Man, you should be wetting your pants with joy. Isn't it the central piece of your every wet dream since you blew apart?"

The wolf dutifully searched his memory and scraped up a couple of instances to support Hale's statement, though a murky image of a good dozen of Bo-unrelated wet dreams immediately sprang unbidden to mind.

"I am not sure about that, mate," Dyson shook his head and eyed Bo's slumped figure with love laced with heavy doubt. He was not doubting the amazing woman, only her motives, he was not doubting himself, only his feelings. His gaze shifted slightly to encompass the tiny dark-clad girl who suddenly looked his way and there was a doubt to mirror his own in Kenzi's eyes. "I have no idea what's happening, Hale," the wolf admitted, "and I don't feel I should be wetting any pants before I know what it is about."

By that time Kenzi had already given up her half-hearted attempts to commandeer the bottle and the shared contents were merrily dancing in the unsteadily-held glasses.

"You just don't get it how lucky you are to be normal, Kenzi," Bo was back in her mopey maudlin post-three-bottles state, "To kiss who you want and as hard as you want, to give it your all instead of taking it all." The brunette plonked the now empty bottle onto the table between them.

"Keep empties away from the table, Granny said it's a bad sign," Kenzi murmured.

"You, weird Russians," Bo drawled lovingly, swung the bottle of contention in a wide arc and thumped it against what she supposed to be the floor next to her seat. The surface that was clearly not the floor gave an outraged yelp that made both of the girls crane their necks and look down. The yelp-giver stood a mere foot from the ground – a flaming-red haired dwarf in a weirdly formal green jacket and mismatched canary-yellow pants who seemed to have just got a nice one with the bottom of the bottle into the chest he was tenderly rubbing.

"Sorry," Bo hiccupped apologetically, "Didn't see you."

"Which is understandable," Kenzi chipped in with bad timing, "You need some serious heels, buddy, if you want to be noticed."

The dwarf glowered up at the girls with no appreciation of the fair sex in his expression. "And you need to stop whining, you little ungrateful brats," he hissed before turning around and making his way across the room in the general direction of the counter, his progress soon hidden from view by the chairs and tables the tops of which his head didn't even clear.

Bo and Kenzi gave a concerted snort of amusement and focused back on their glasses and their grievances.

"The short stack kinda pinned you down with the ungrateful part," Kenzi confided, leaning closer to her friend, "You've really got it cushy. Everyone desires you, everyone craves you, you order peeps around with a touch, hey, you don't even have to your cheque if you can get your hands on the waiter. And still you find what to be moping about."

"Cushy? Hello?!" Bo's eyebrows shot up in indignation, "Have you ever tried succubussing it for a day, girl? That's one job that takes it out of you and … and my glass is empty."

"Haven't you had enough? Already wobbly on your pins," Kenzi reasoned with the functionable remnants of her sensible thinking.

"Then you, the unwobbly one, go and get a refill for us," Bo's logic seemed unbeatable and Kenzi squirmed out of her seat and meandered towards the counter.

"Another one of the same, Trickster, good stuff," she grabbed the counter top for purchase and saw the bartender giving her an unamused look. "Wine?" he asked with an undertone of surprise.

"Once in a while a girl wants to feel a lady, right?" Kenzi beamed to compensate for her substandard articulation, "And put it on Bo's tab. Mine is overburdened enough. Besides, I have to listen to her moaning about how much it sucks to be a succubus. And yet tomorrow she'll get her chi-fill and she'll be as good as new. And poor old human me would be shrinking from any sharp sound and a scrap of bright light for another day till my head stops thrumming like church-bells."

"If I give you another bottle on the house, will you stop assailing my poor ears with your drunken woes?" Trick put a dark green bottle on the counter by way of a visual incentive.

"Deal," the girl seized the booze and swirled in what was meant to be a graceful retreat move. Instead she gave the patron occupying the closest barstool a good smack on the bottom with her unbottled, yet heavy, hand.

"Geez, lass," came the already familiar yelp, "ungrateful and uncoordinated at that!"

"Sorry..," Kenzi started the spiel without much feeling to it, "Oh, you again, why do you keep getting in my way? The bar is big enough and you're small enough…" She broke off for a giggle, which she would be ashamed of were she a bit more sober, but the dwarf in the green jacket didn't wait for a more sincere apology that was obviously not coming from the tipsy Russian. His slitted eyes lit up and his small puffy hands rubbed against each other as he muttered something incomprehensible, even it heard, under his nose and made another swift exit. If Kenzi hadn't been so busy glaring at his colour-uncoordinated outfit she might have noticed the mischievous yellow glitter in his eyes and the weird iridescence that danced inside her bottle for a split second. As it was, she gave an it-takes-all-sorts kind of shrug and headed for her table.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The wine didn't hit her hard enough, not the type of hard Kenzi would have expected from her fourth bottle of the night. It slipped down her throat with a velvety quality of warm honeyed milk her Granny used to ply her with whenever the girl admitted to a case of a scratchy throat or at the hint of a runny nose. Kenzi even sniffed the neck of the bottle suspiciously but the smell was all there – heavy fumes of alcohol with a tart tang to it. Bo's screwed up face was further proof of the potency of the drink and the human girl dismissed her fleeting odd sensation as a quirk of her overtaxed palate.

Another glass later, however, the distinct sense of weirdness was back with a vengeance. Kenzi's head seemed to be clearing up with every sip she took while Bo got imbued with the acerbic stuff at an alarmingly unsuccubus rate. When her forehead fell onto her folded hands with a dull thump the younger girl felt it was her cue to get them both out of there. That was when Kenzi made a visual sweep of the Dal and locked eyes with the shifter's blue. Dyson didn't need a wiki to decipher the girl's desperate mayday look and was at their side as fast as the densely customer-peppered expanse of the bar allowed.

"She's shit-faced, D-man," Kenzi whispered conspiratorially, pointing with her chin at her half-delirious bestie, "We need to move her out of here before she perks up and starts succu-frolicking."

"My car is parked just outside," the wolf nodded his understanding and looped his long arms around Bo to lift her from her seat.

"You smell … familiar," she blurred, her head falling in a rag-doll fashion onto Dyson's shoulder, "and tasty."

"Oh, no, just don't go blue-eyed on the furry ass, Bobo," Kenzi begged more rattled than she cared to admit, "Hammered and blue-eyed that's a hell of a bad combo!"

"She seems pretty much out of it, Kenz," Dyson remarked consolingly, Let's get her outside." With that he concentrated on dragging the limp body through the bar and to the door that promised the soothing cool of the autumnal night. And soothing it was, at least, as far as Kenzi's tingling nerves were concerned. Once out of the fumy atmosphere of her favourite watering hole the girl suddenly felt fully restored and her head bore no scantiest resemblance to the church-bells she had mentioned in her earlier hangover-related talk with Trick. Bo, on the other hand, seemed no less intoxicated and her half-closed eyes didn't allow her anxious friends to get a glimpse of their present colour.

Dyson braced the woman against the side of the car and half-turned to Kenzi. "Can you try and keep her vertical while I am opening the car?" he asked giving her frail figure a doubtful once-over. He clearly didn't rate the Russian girl's chances against Bo's more than endowed and alcohol-relaxed form. Though no less uncertain on that score, Kenzi grasped the nettle, which in that instance meant grasping the succubus' leather jacket and pressing her own meager weight into the slumped body to keep it upright. Half a minute was enough for Dyson to open and start the car and he immediately went back to the rescue taking hold of the brunette again.

"She's lighter than I thought," Kenzi announced proudly, releasing her friend and watching the wolf positioning the woman in the back seat of his car. "And where do you think you're taking her?" she asked as an after-thought.

"Home, sweet home," Dyson grunted extricating himself with evident difficulty from Bo's arms that suddenly came to life and threatened to weave themselves around his neck.

"What is it – the night of daft ideas?" the girl moaned rhetorically, "Home is where Lauren is and Lauren is … a bit unwell. And Bo is obviously not on her best bedside manners right now. I would recommend some neutral Lauren-free ground for the smashed chi-hoover to sleep it off in peace."

"Meaning?" Dyson growled with a heavy suspicion.

"Your place?" Kenzi did her best cheerful simpleton face and beamed in what she hoped would pass for a disarming manner in the dimly lit lane.

"With her like that," the shifter pointed a finger at the succubus sprawled across the back seat, whose features were slowly composing themselves in a peckish pout, "no way."

"What? Do you need a rape whistle?" his human friend archly enquired. Before Dyson could think of a sufficiently dignified response to that Bo somehow managed to regain some fractured possession of her tongue to get out a stifled but distinguishable, "I'm so hungry."

The statement did nothing to alleviate the concern that was weighing on the friends' minds and the wolf put a heavy hand on Kenzi's shoulder and said emphatically, "Either I'm taking you to your roof-caving abode or we're going, all the three of us, to my loft and you're playing chaperone to the liver-damaged here till her senses are back."

"Are you seriously passing up the opportunity of some alone time with the succubus?" Kenzi couldn't resist a barb.

"I am not going to take advantage of her nature or of her state," Dyson grumbled, "And I'm not really into sleeping with women whose heart belongs to someone else."

"I am so proud of you, Dy," the girl giggled simultaneously amused and touched by his words, "Forgive me for all the times I called you a scruffy flea-bag."

"Hop in unless you fancy a long walk," the wolf rumbled back good-naturedly and got into the driver's seat.

Dyson gave the girls his bed and rolled out a sleeping bag for himself in the opposite corner of his spacious loft, the arrangement which majorly facilitated Kenzi's succubus-guarding task. However, she was fast overcome with drowsiness and her soft snoring closely followed the shifter's deeper sounds. Somewhere in the middle of what promised to be one heavy-dreaming night Bo jerked in her sleep and woke herself up. She sat straight up on the bed and took a good minute to adjust to her spinning head and to the darkish outlines of a place than was obviously not her own bed-room. Then she took the liberty of slowly looking around and recognized the place for what it was. Once her eyes got adjusted to the muted contours of the night she could make out the tiny form of Kenzi next to her on the big bed while the sound of rumbling low-pitched snoring told her the wolf was somewhere around as well.

Bo felt weird – weak and shattered and the relentless thrumming inside her head did nothing to alleviate her malaise. Her throat felt parched and she had never before experienced such after-effects of over-indulging. Her first ever binge had been an ice-cream too many case in comparison. Only now could the succubus fully feel for the _"morning Kenzi"_ whose sufferings she used to be so insensitively dismissive of. Water, the fluid crystalline substance giving relief and comfort immediately sprang to the top of Bo's want-list and the woman threw back the cover someone had so mindfully put over her.

The brunette did the best tiptoe she could manage at the moment across the somnolent room to the corner containing a kitchenette that catered for Dyson's unpretentious culinary tastes. Bo snatched an upended glass from the draining board and turned the tap on.

"You can switch on the side-light," a familiar voice grumbled from behind and a bare bulb handing on a cord to the side of the sink went on, making the succubus swivel on the spot. Dyson, a bit more disheveled than usually was scratching his head in front of her with a slightly dazzled look in his sleep-slitted eyes.

"I was dying for some water," Bo explained in a frenzied whisper getting back to the process of moisturizing her arid system. The cold liquid made her feel less dizzy but the overwhelming sickening weakness was still in place. "What's happening to me?" the succubus muttered to herself and her gaze shifted back to her gracious host. The sight of Dyson in his cotton undervest and drawstring pants hit her like a jolt and gave her an idea natural to her kind. Here was an opportunity to relieve her physical suffering as well as his mental pain in one go. She lurched forward finding purchase against his chest and lifted her face into his. "I think I need help here, Dyson, just a small taste, we don't want to wake Kenzi up," her lips were practically touching his and her hands pressed into his skin willing him to catch her own wavelength but the wolf remained stoney and unresponsive.

"I am not an ibuprofen pill, Bo," he answered with a dollop of dryness, "It's just a hangover, you'll feel better in the morning." He gently took her hands off his chest and strode back to his sleeping bag without a backward glance of what-if. Bo rocked on her heels and braced a hand against the sink. "It's not possible, my batteries are completely flat," she shook her head and looked at her fingers void of juices in stunned disbelief. The wolf had been able to resist her succubus powers in the past but never before had he failed to feel their pull altogether.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Kenzi slept the sleep of the just all through Dyson's brush with the succubus and was the only one in the loft to wake up refreshed, though ravenously hungry. Thus incentivized, the girl rushed to the kitchenette with a quick detour into what passed for a shower stall in the wolf's ascetic dwelling. Bo and Dyson, seated at a distance from each other across the kitchen table, greeted her with near identical fuzzy embarrassed smiles of not getting enough sleep and not feeling very comfortable.

"So much for rise and shine!" the human girl intoned, "Am I the only one here who can look her hangover in the face without flinching?"

"Seems like, you're disgustingly chirpy," Bo grumbled back, keeping her eyes to the counter as to escape Dyson's occasional searching gaze.

"And I've so got the munchies after yesterday's wine-fest, we should've stuck to vodka, " Kenzi went on, helping herself to toasts, jam and coffee positioned on the table, "By the way, guys, why are you so tense around each other? Unnaturally so for the people who shared more then a few rolls in the hay back in the day."

"I like you more when you're eating with your mouth shut," the shifter muttered audibly and the girl allowed a more attentive examination of the fae present – Bo looked sickly, pale and drained and beneath Dyson's usual broody exterior Kenzi could easily read a hefty bit of confusion. Feeling her bestie's silver-grey eyes boring into her, the succubus put down a piece of toast she had been purposefully reducing to crumbs and spoke up unsteadily, "I think I exceeded the legal quota for daft things last night and would like to apologize to everyone present in bulk for whatever stunts the silly drunken me had pulled."

Dyson nodded his acknowledgement with eager enthusiasm, clearly glad to dismiss the recent seduction incident as an alcohol-inspired misunderstanding, and Kenzi responded with a royal sweep of her hand that was designed to convey a let's-forger-it message and bring her fingers within grabbing distance of another toast.

"And I also think that there's another person I need to talk to, asap," Bo continued raising from the table.

"If you mean our sleeping blonde beauty, you'd better hold your horses, our last night rehearsal was far from satisfactory," the other girl chipped in, surprising herself again with how unwilling she felt to let Bo brashly burn her bridges with her doctor.

"I might look like hungover shit and feel no better, but I am sober and less desperate than yesterday, Kenz," Bo said by way of putting her bff at ease without revealing to much to Dyson's pricked ears, "I am done rushing into emotional things without giving it an extra think and then another, but Lauren should be worried about our absence and I should be going. Coming along?"

The invitation sounded lukewarm enough to make Kenzi feel justified in clinging to the food on the table and giving a vigorous shake of the head. "I'd rather finish here first," she replied and Bo didn't bother to hide her relief at that choice of the course of action.

As soon as the door closed behind Bo, all the tension, stoked up in the loft, seemed to have gone with her. Dyson moved himself onto a chair next to Kenzi and finally got down to concocting a toast for himself, his face and posture obviously relaxed.

"What the heck happened between you two?" the girl asked in between munching.

"I slept on the floor, have just had half my fridge demolished by a deceptively petite Russian nomad and excuse me for not being in a confiding mood," the wolf grumbled, "But one thing I can tell you, Bo is wound-up and confused over some emotional stuff and I think she needs time and distance to put things into prospective and I can wheel out some more clichés."

"That she is," Kenzi mumbled reflectively and contemplated the remnants of the plate that used to be piled high with toasts only five minutes before and the now half-empty jar of jam, "And that has been what I call a nice breakfast but I still have a strange hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach."

"Must be pangs of conscience," Dyson replied archly, which earned him a playful punch in the shoulder.

"Don't expect to shame me into volunteering for washing-up duty," the girl grinned and Dyson was suddenly washed over by a sense of easy happiness at the sight of laughter in her wonderful eyes that were now twinkling a distinct blue.

"You sound just like Kenzi, but look different," he remarked, uncertain of what spurred him into saying it and the girl shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly, "Guess you haven't seen me with my make-up washed off before."

Bo stepped inside her dilapidated home, pulled the door carefully shut behind her and stepped over the threshold into the room generally known as the living-room. Her anti-noise precautions, however, turned out a waste of effort as the person, they had been taken for, rose from the sofa to meet her. "Lauren, you're awake," Bo mumbled as the blonde woman rushed over to hug her. 'I was worried, Bo, you left, didn't pick up your phone. Considering Kenzi was nowhere around, I called the Dal and Trick said you had been drinking there together but then left."

"My battery's dead," the succubus answered and felt a chill creeping down her spine at how ominous the words sounded to her, "And we got pretty hammered last night and Dyson took us to his loft to sleep it off."

"Oh," Lauren exhaled, unsure of how to take it and tried for a joke that was only half-joke, "I might be getting worried on that score but going by the way you look you didn't use him for a recharge."

Bo shook her head with a crooked smile, not having the heart to add that she had actually tried and failed. "No, but I am sorry for getting you anxious, for not calling, for not coming straight home, the list is long."

Lauren's face broke into a tender smile as she held her arms towards the woman she loved, "Hush, baby, you know that I'll always forgive you. And if by 'the list is long' you meant what had happened before you left for your drink session, I think we should talk about it."

"Really?" Bo uttered, feeling distinctly panicked as she leaned slightly back against the conveniently supportive wall of the room, "I mean I know we should. I nearly killed you."

"Don't expect the incident to frighten me away," the blonde doctor said gravely, "I know more about your species than you yourself do. I know the odds of something like that happening but I also trust you to bring me back if that is needed. And I know that you'll be getting progressively better at controlling your powers."

"Besides," Lauren went on, her face switching to a naughty look that lit up her serious brown eyes, "If memory serves, what was happening between us was well worth the risk. I'm all for more practice."

Bo's left palm pressed against the rough surface of the wall in an instinctive search for support for her suddenly jelly-like body as relief and tenderness flooded her but she immediately jerked her hand back with an _ouch_ of pain.

"Damn, I scratched my palm against a nail or something, we really should think of doing up this place," she moaned bringing up her blooded hand that Lauren took a gentle hold of. "My poor baby, I can fetch some gauze and antiseptic or we can just kiss the scratch away, together with your hangover," the doctor whispered bringing her face closer to Bo's. With all her heart and a flare-up of desire the succubus pressed her mouth against the willing lips of her lover. A kiss happened – a smoldering, passionate kiss full of love and promises but no stream of chi was to be dragged from the human into Bo's body. The brunette drew away and looked aghast into Lauren's surprised face.

"What is happening to me, Lauren?" the succubus whispered, terrified, "I can't do my thing, I don't feel a succubus at all."

**Author's Note: As long as i am really tied-up at work, i've opted for posting shorter chapters but at closer intervals. Hope, that might work better in terms of not forgetting what the story is all about. A big thank-you for everyone who is following and reviewing. I didn't advertise any pairings so far but the way the story is now going one is too sweet not to be made the endgame and another will be shaping up soon.**


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Kenzi sauntered down the aisle with a jaunty air of the monetary unconcerned. In actual fact her pocket was about as empty as her stomach, that had been persistently begging her for some substance since she left Dyson's loft. The wolf had rushed off to the cop shop on an urgent police matter and the girl had planned to return to the Bo palace. Half-way there, however, a nagging feeling of hunger mixed with a tepid enthusiasm for walking in on a Bo-Lauren's heart-to-heart, which could well veer into a body-to-body, led her astray and into a supermarket. She just couldn't resist the bright packaging on the shelves as she rushed through the place, nimbly helping herself to smaller-sized items, like bars of expensive Swiss chocolate and a packet of peanuts that were finding their way into the inner pockets of her jacket. The idea was not to linger, look confident and brazen it out of there but when she had cleared the check out and was almost at the door, a heavy hand fell on her shoulder.

"Excuse me, miss," a gruff voice went from behind and, swirling round, the girl saw an importantly-looking man in his mid-thirties, fitted with a badge and a grave look of disapproval on his clean-shaven face.

"Store detective," flashed through the Russian's mind as she mentally chided herself, "CCTV, damn the balls of the inventor. You're losing your touch, Kenz."

"Yes, officer?" she voiced coldly, presenting an unfazed facade.

"I believe you've forgotten to pay for the contents of your pockets," the store detective continued in his i-wanna-be-polite-but-not buying-any-bullshit tone.

"Really, officer? Do I look like a petty shoplifter to you?" Kenzi tried for righteous indignation and raised her own hand to take the man's heavy paw off her guilty shoulder. As soon as her fingers touched his, she felt as if a low-voltage static electricity passed through her hand but wasn't about to focus on the weird sensation, but the man's suddenly beaming face threw her into a bit of confusion. Gone was the slightly arrogant look of authority, exchanged for a goofy grin and an unmistakably lustful glint in the eye as the guard ogled the fragile girl's figure.

"Oh, you are too beautiful for that, miss, you are so very beautiful," he drawled as if under an epiphany.

"I've never seen anyone getting stoned in the space of a second," Kenzi mused aloud, surprised but was not above making the most out of the unexpected turn of events.

"So, seeing I am so beautiful, can I go now, officer?" she asked taking a tentative step back.

"But I don't want you to leave," the dazzled store detective answered imploringly, "Take any sweets you like, just stay".

"Thanks for the offer but I think I'll pass on the second part of it," Kenzi's wind was totally up as she sped across the store space and out of the door, her heels clicking and her heart racing. She had barely made it round the corner of the building and found herself in a tiny side lane as she heard footfalls behind and the now familiar voice of the badged weirdo called after her with more flattering adjectives.

The girl didn't particularly rate her chances in the running contest against the flat-heeled and obviously fit man, so she opted for the direct approached and stopped in her tracks.

"What do you want with me? Are you some fae who gets off on chocolate-swiping Slavic girls or what?" she turned fisting her little hands and ready for some punch-in-the-balls-and-run-for-it action, "Just in case, I'll let you know that I have some very influential friends, maybe not exactly influential, but definitely of a clawed-muscled variety."

"I just wanted to look at your astonishing face again, you're amazing," the man went on muttering what under different circumstances could be music to any girl's ears, but under that particular set was freaking Kenzi out big-time.

"Ok, had a look? Now bugger off," she barked in her best commanding voice, but the guard's stupefied moony expression started suddenly to clear, returning to the former sensible look of authority. "I think I asked you a question, miss," he started, evidently changing tack, "Could you please show me your pockets and the check from the store?"

"Nonna told me sweets are bad for you," Kenzi murmured weighing her options but as if prodded on by an outburst of the gut-feeling activity she made a grab for the guard's hand again. The same strange tingling swept through her fingers and the man broke into the same broad smile again and another sharp pang of hunger shot through the girl's whole being. Losing herself into the urge, she lunged forward, seizing the sides of the man's face and bringing him down to her height to press her starving mouth to his willing one. A mind-blowing sensation of crackling warm energy began to feel Kenzi, swishing through her system, making her nerve endings jangle and sending waves of pleasure. The world around her, the feeling of the now-and-here slipped away fading into insignificance as the sense of fullness overcame her consciousness.

When the sharp contours of the reality returned, Kenzi was standing over a body of the man lying prone and limp, like a discarded gutted soft toy on the dirty asphalt of the lane. Now in full-blown panic mode, the girl bent down and pressed a finger to his neck – the pulse was mercifully there, but weak and thready, what made her own heart make another horrified skip, however, was the sight of his happily smiling bluish face.

Dyson had just made it back into the bullpen and to his desk when Hale caught his sleeve and his attention in one fluid motion. "We've just got a call from Lauren – sounds like a fae attack on human, she's tending to the vic," he whispered and went on plaintively, "Why does it always have to happen the day I was planning a big night for my girl?"

"Hint taken," the wolf cracked a smile, "I'll take it on, relax, partner. You and Kenzi need some together time and I can do with a bit of work to clear the cobwebs out of my Bo-confused mind." He took the proffered piece of paper with an address scribbled on it and made it out again, leaving a very relieved siren behind to arrange a restaurant venue and flowers delivery.

The scene of the crime shocked stray thoughts out of the shifter's mind and filled it with another installment of worries as soon as he saw the human casualty carried into an ambulance on a stretcher. Lauren hurried over to the wolf, clutching her hands together in a white-knuckled nervous grip.

"It's a succubus attack, Dyson," she reported agitatedly.

"Thanks, doctor obvious," the wolf growled no less rattled than the blonde woman, "I can see his loopy grin from here."

"He'll live but guess we'll need to call in a memory-eraser to cover that one up," she stuttered.

"And a doctor's certificate with a fake hypoglycemia attack in it would be handy," Dyson remarked but a more pressing concern made him frown, "A succubus feed, hey? Do we know a lot of those around?"

"What are you implying? That Bo could have done this?" Lauren protested hotly, "And again you fail to align your way of thinking to Bo's. She would never feed off an innocent human. Can you finally get the message through your thousand-year fae-superiority complex?!"

"It's just a hell of a coincidence and I only meant that Bo might know something," Dyson was surprised to hear an apologetic note in his voice and feel a slight blush coming into his pale face. Was he really not shot of his prejudice? Hadn't Kenzi done enough to clear that out of his system? These were definitely the questions to ponder as soon as he got the time.

"Bo has been home since the morning anyway," Lauren replied firmly, straightening to look into the wolf's face defiantly, "And not because I say so to protect, but because she really has. Besides, she's … not well, incapable of attacking anyone."

"Sick? She looked the part when she left my loft this morning," the man's frown was not relieved.

"This is something we'll need to talk about later," the blonde rattled off as the ambulance driver called for her, "But take my word for it – it wasn't Bo who fed on this man."

Dyson nodded solemnly and strode over to the ambulance after the doctor, then he leaned inside to have a good look at the victim. When he moved back there was a shiny badge in his hand. "Macey's superstore," he read the engraved wording meditatively, "It's just round the corner. Time to do some police work there. The culprit, whoever that was, must have lured the guy out of the store and might have been caught by the cameras."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The CCTV footage, for once, did not disappoint a policeman's heart – here was his culprit, in unfashionable but more than discernable black and white, besides, those crystalline eyes lost little of their instantly recognizable magnetic quality even in monochrome. The girl who spoke had spoken the last to the victim, the girl who had rushed out of the store closely followed by the bedazzled guard. Dyson rewound the tape a couple of times, like an entrenched movie fan trying to capture all the subtlest nuances of a brilliantly delivered scene, and yet a lot of plot twists eluded him. Apart from the how Kenzi had found her way to the scene of the crime-to-be, a host of other why-questions swirled in the shifter's stunned mind: why had the man seemed so jolted by the touch of Kenzi's small hand, why had he looked so weird, why had he followed her after evidently letting her go? And most importantly – what the hell had happened in that lane and where was Kenzi at the moment?

Dyson did his best impersonation of a no-nonsense cop and requested the tape in the interests of the investigation glaring down from his considerable height at the slightly cowed store manager. Pocketing the evidence, he smoothely sidestepped the inquiry as to which hospital the store guard had been taken to, reeled off the usual piece about the police doing their utmost to find the criminal and made a hasty exit, heading straight to the spot where the victim had been picked by the faembulance. Now that the lane was empty it was easier for the wolf to pick up the weak, but still lingering and still the all-too-familiar smell of the tiny human he had come to consider his family.

At another end of the city in what was none to the fae and the select few of the humans as the Light fae compound infirmary Lauren was tending to her patient. As soon as he was stabilized, memory-cleansed and properly taken care of, the blonde hurried back to the shack, propelled by her nagging worry about the inexplicably disabled succubus. She was understandably relieved to find Bo where she had left her – curled into a tight ball on her bed, wrapped in a blanket for comfort more than for warmth. The only difference between the before picture and the now picture was a half-emptied bottle peeking from behind the pillow, that had clearly failed in its nerve-settling purpose as the pale and concerned-creased face of her lover was to no degree more relaxed.

Lauren wriggled her way next to the brunette and looped an arm around her in a warm comforting gesture. "And now I need a blow-by-blow account of everything and anything that happened to you and Kenzi on your wine-glugging outing yesterday," the doctor said, her voice gentle and yet sobering as her analytical mind of a born researcher kicked into high gear. A while later she was still trying to arrange the information when a shrill sound of her cell interfered with her theory-building process. In his deep voice the wolf passed a few more jigsaw puzzle pieces down the wireless line.

"First off, I don't know what the feack is happening but Kenzi was on the scene when the store detective got attacked," Dyson hissed into the phone, "And I actually couldn't pick any more scents there, besides hers, the victim's and yours and now I am following her trail. Where is Bo and what does she know about this newly-arisen mess?"

Succinctly, the doctor clued him in as to the events of the previous night or, at the very least, of the part of them that were coherent in Bo's rendition and made any sense at all.

"And now we've got a succubus who can't succu-suck any more and a human involved in a succubus-MO attack," the shifter summarized their findings, stunned into bluntness, "And all of that after sharing a couple of bottles at the Dal and literally bumping into a strange dwarf. Either it's an intricate sequence of coincidences and Bo's only got a bug and Kenzi, just her Russian luck, happened to come across another unregistered succubus' feed and is now abducted as a witness or a snack for a rainy day or … "

"Or Kenzi is the one who actually fed and was shocked into fleeing from the scene," Lauren finished for him, watching Bo at her side visible tense before she supplied tentatively, "The call I got, telling me about the attack on a human ... I thought the caller sounded like Kenzi, like a frightened and disoriented Kenzi."

"Like they swapped abilities," Dyson rolled the idea on his tongue, as if tasting it for plausibility, "or rather swapped Bo's ability for a human disability."

"If you say _disability_ and _human_ in the same sentence again, next time during a physical I'll give you a horse tranquilizer shot and on awaking you might not find yourself in one wolf piece," the doctor promised darkly, bristling at the habitual fae put-down, which coming from a person she considered a gang fellow smarted more than usual.

"Sorry, doc, no offence meant just poor brain-tongue coordination," the shifter backtracked, "Putting things into words is not my forte."

Bo, listening in to one side of the phone conversation, made a grab for the sell.

"Stop exchanging pleasantries, Dyson," she barked into the phone, "Whichever theory is true, you need to find Kenzi, like immediately. She can be kidnapped or just scared, confused and lost– believe me I know the feeling."

"I am on it, Bo, I promise I'll track Kenzi down and you and Lauren, in the meanwhile, had better relocate to the wise one's book-strewn lair and put the doctor's brilliant mind to good use by finding out what can be the cause of this mess," the shifter replied gravely, "And believe me I don't need to be reminded that Kenzi is the priority here."

Lauren repossessed her cell and terminated the call, then she got down to removing Bo from under her protective cover and putting into some going-out-clothes while Dyson found himself sniffing his way through an abandoned-looking area of half-ruined buildings, obviously begging for knocking down and redevelopment. Kenzi's scent grew fainter but now the wolf could rely upon his vision as his sharp eyes caught a recently trampled-on patch of grass and a freshly dislocated board of a rickety fence. The wolf had to remove an adjacent board to widen an opening that was only big enough to have let someone Kenzi-sized into an overgrown semblance of a backyard. Then he slunk to the back door of the house and focused on making his exit as inconspicuous as possible.

For the first time in the recent couple of hours Kenzi's hands stopped shaking and she settled into a kind of precarious calmness, allowing her mind to finally do some thinking. Her memories of what had happened were blurred and fuzzy around the edges, with flashes of colour and emotional intensity here and there – the physical shock of her body performing a brand-new function, the exquisite pleasure of the energy filling her and quenching her hunger, the man hitting the floor of the lane with a dull thump. "He is alive, I felt his pulse," Kenzi said for a hundredth time what was turning into a mantra of hers. She vaguely remembered dialing Lauren and blurting out the address garnishing it a with a garbled warning of a fae-involvement, of a human injured. "The doc will set everything right," she uttered her second mantra of the day.

The girl couldn't actually recollect what had brought her to this abandoned house, but a fuzzy memory of a squat shared with a couple of girls from a gang she had run with in her early street days crawled lazily to the forefront of her mind before it was jostled out by the burning hot pain of realizing something else –something that she hadn't yet come up with a mantra for. It was her who nearly killed that man, who had been stoked into an uncontrollable animalistic lust for something that was not hers – his life-force. "What happened to the awesome old me? Why am I doing a Bo? Succubism cannot be infectious, right? Otherwise, the Blondie would've started hovering down chi long before me?" Kenzi forced herself into some reasoning, trying to marshal her thoughts and scraps of resurfacing recollections. The girl didn't get much further, however, as a tidal wave of pain, gnawing at her very core, washed over her, and she cringed at the realization – the hunger was making a slow return.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The old house was full of packed dust and creaking half-noises and Kenzi was oddly grateful for the dark unappealing anonymity of her surroundings. It kept her inside, enveloping her into a protective layer – a layer protecting the others, the innocent outsiders, from the craving hungry little monster she was morphing into. The girl was mercifully alone, no beating hearts and radiating auras around, but in her starved mind she could visualize what she would do if a breathing chi-filled human being appeared on the threshold of the plaster dripping poky room she was cooped up in. She could almost feel the electric rush of energy saturating her aching body and see a paling face spreading into a dead smile, like the one she had seen on the face of her offender who Bo left behind in the elevator for two fae detectives to find, like the one that essentially kick-started a new life for a street-smart grifter. And now she, the human Kenzi, was somehow stuffed into her bestie's shoes – plus the succubus powers, minus the experience-born ability to control them.

Kenzi curled herself into a tighter little ball in one corner of the room, her knees tucked under her chin, her butt chafing against the worn short-piled rug covering the wooden floorboards. Her small body was slightly rocking as if swayed by the opposing instincts waging a war inside her – the newly rising sexual predator instinct versus the still not ousted survival-of-the-species instinct, the urge to get up and out to hunt for a living battery versus a conscious desire to save her kind from herself. The Russian knew that whatever the outcome of the conflict, someone was to die, either she from torturous starvation or the one who would save her from it.

Her hand slipped into her jacket fishing for her cell. "I have to call someone – Bo, Dyson, Trick, the doc. They'll help, they'll cure me or contain me," she was talking herself into making the call and nearly succeeding but her hand came up with a chocolate bar she had swiped at the store instead of her phone. Kenzi squealed and dropped the candy as if it had singed her fingers, the memory of the earlier events hitting her full force, and it took her the last of her energy and resolve to start searching her other pocket. The cell finally drawn out and clutched in her palm, she paused, frozen into irresolute procrastination with fear, with hope. But before she could tap a number, a barely audible sound made her start – a floorboard squeaked somewhere in the adjacent room under a heavy tread of a man-sized individual and the girl stifled a scream brought on by the realization that she was no longer alone in the musty confined space. The Kenzi in her flew into a panic of an unarmed street kid cornered in a secluded place while a new, burgeoning superhuman creature in her could barely suppress a surge of combative arrogance. _If that's some creep, he's in for it, like balls-deep, he doesn't know yet how deceptive a fragile girl's looks can be. _

Lithely, the girl picked herself off the floor and stilled, barely visible in her customary black against the dark wall. There were no more squeaks coming but with all of her sharpened senses she could pick up warm breathing sounds approaching. Kenzi tensed momentarily and then relaxed again, she was not going to rely on her physical strength, not yet, not until she knew if she had any to consider relying on; deep down, however, she knew that all she needed was to get close enough to whoever was coming for her, close enough for one kiss.

A tall male figure was outlined in the dim light coming from the boarded-up window and Kenzi was ready for a swift approach, she made half a step forward and froze in her tracks when a familiar deep voice called her name.

"Kenzi, it's me, Dyson, I've come for you, babe," the shifter's tone was level with a touch of relieved at finding his dearest human, "You aren't hurt, are you?"

Kenzi shook her head, a tear spilling, her whole body trembling, as she crossed the short distance to bury her face in the warm leather of his jacket.

"No, not hurt, Dyson, but I am not well, so not well," she breathed out, clutching at him, hugging him, hoping for the familiar feeling of comfort the man had always given her with his calm solid strength.

"I know, babe, I know, but it'll be all right, we'll sort it out," the wolf was almost cooing, soothing, lulling, persuading her into melting, into feeling safe and cared-for. "You're shaking, you're cold," he covered her little fingers with his hands, surprised at their stinging coldness. The pure suffering on her face, the desperation with which she leaned into him were killing him but the idea of the physical discomfort adding to his little Kenzi's ongoing torture was simply unbearable. Impulsively, he tugged at the zipper and peeled the jacket off his shoulder, draping it around her fragile form with poor blood circulation.

The girl gratefully wrapped the oversized jacket tighter around her and smiled her thanks, lifting her face to look at Dyson. And look she did. She looked at his disheveled curls, at his concern-lit blue eyes, her gaze slid down to his shirt gaping open, to the fine light hairs on his steadily rising and falling chest, down to the dark leather of his belt and still down. She was looking and relishing the sight, her hungry electrified eyes feasting on the contours of the tight muscle under the thin fabric, her finger-tips suddenly itching to feel the cool metal of the buckle and the warm skin beneath it. Dyson slowly registered the trajectory of her stare and his relieved half-smile faded and died.

"Kenzi?" he asked, his tone laced with confusion and a suspicion that refused to form, "I think we should go."

"No, not just yet," she whispered back, her voice taking on a husky quality, changing to playful and seductive, "I like it here, with you. Here and now." She suddenly looked up again and her silver grey eyes were intense, darkening, swirling with royal blue. The wolf was rooted to the spot, mesmerized by the sight, drawn into the warm pulse of energy radiating from the little woman in front of him. He took an extra second to shake off the intoxicating feeling of sweet surrender, a second too long. Kenzi went up on tiptoe and flung her arms around his neck possessively, her hot lips biting into his, her tongue demanding entrance and gaining it as soon as she sent a pulse of desire into Dyson's body. With all the unbridled raw power, unchained by self-control, unmoderated by fae social rules and kicked into highest possible gear by the overpowering, blinding hunger she willed the wolf to give in to her desire, to give in to his own, to crave for her, to give her his all.

His shirt floated down to the floor closely followed by both the jackets thrown off her tiny body, the belt and zippers were dealt with in a blink and Dyson and Kenzi, their hyped bodies intertwined and burning hot for each other, their minds blank of reality and running on primeval instinct, went down onto the heap of clothes. The girl cried out, relishing the fleeting sensation of pain when he entered her, her nails raking against his chest in welcome retaliation, drawing blood and a gasp from the wolf. He brought his weight down onto, her burrowing deeper into her body but his dominance was short-term. A steady stream of his energy, flowing into Kenzi, shifted the balance of physical power and in a display of new-found force she flipped him onto his back, straddling him, riding him, draining him. She was taking all he could give and enjoying the ride.

Later Kenzi was drifting on soft waves of pleasure that were calming and slowing their roll, her high was gradually wearing off and her mind was clearing, opening up to other sensations – the chill creeping up from the cracks in the floor, a tiny piece of metal digging annoyingly into her naked thigh. She slid a hand to rub at the tender spot and her fingers felt what was easily recognizable as the prong of a belt buckle. The realization came upon her like a ton of bricks weighted down by a cement block – the realization coloured by the memories that would have made her blush if she hadn't been thrown into another overwhelming emotion.

"Dyson!" she shrieked shooting up to a sitting position, unconcerned about her state of near-complete undress. The wolf was lying next to her, his eyes closed, his naked body limp and covered in sweat, the air seemingly undisturbed by his breathing and a stray sun ray from the chink in the intersecting boards on the window highlighting the sickly pallor of his face. "Dyson!" Kenzi screamed again and again and leaned over him, drowning in her own tears, checking for inhale, checking for pulse, slapping his cheeks like she had done once in his loft hoping to get him back to his senses then, desperate to get him back to life now.

_Author's Note: Wow! That was an extremely difficult chapter for me to write, primarily because i was trying to strike an elusive note which i am not sure of myself. _

_Thanks for all the reviews and thank you, RealityDidMeIn, for an interesting suggestion. i actually haven't thought that far ahead (as is usually the case with me) but i will definitely think about that possibility._


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Trick passed a weary hand across his forehead – the story Lauren had just unleashed upon him made him feel sickly, dizzy, crushed. "Let me recap that," he started and faltered, "No, I don't want to recap that."

Bo was perching on an arm of the sofa, next to her blonde lover, looking forlorn, guilty and worried at the same time. Her eyes didn't stray from her own knees – the spot she found strangely comforting, nothing deprecating about her knees unlike her grandpa's scorching gaze.

"It's not Bo's fault," Lauren reminded him mildly, "The girls have got themselves into trouble but that jut what they do. The important thing is to assess the proportions of the trouble and to find out who is at the bottom of it. The only fae they remember interacting with, the possible culprit, is the one Bo described – the grumpy dwarf in the green jacket."

"Those two vacuum-heads let it rip in my bar, harassed my customer," Trick refused to be placated so easily, "You should've known better by now, Bo. No one is what they seem in the fae world. The funny dwarf in an outrageous jacket might well be the King of shifters who on a starry night turns into a snow lynx. Oh, don't let me wax poetic!"

"We were drunk and irresponsible," the ex-succubus admitted dejectedly, "But whatever he was, we didn't harass him, just took a few friendly-minded digs. He, if this is all his fault, obviously overreacted."

"Whatever!" the doctor raised a constructive voice and stood up between the miffed grand-dad and his half-apologetic half-defensive granddaughter, "We don't need to point fingers, we need solutions, we need to find out what happened to the girls."

"Research time," the Blood King grumbled and waddled over to the most crammed shelf of his. After a brief consideration he returned with a few intimidatingly thick tomes, which he dumped into Bo's lap not without a gloating glint to his eyes.

A couple of hours later there was still no news of Kenzi, Dyson was not picking his phone and the suspected fae remained elusive. The brunette dropped the book chock-full of illustrations with a despairing sigh, which caused both Lauren and Trick to look up from their own materials. "Nothing, he is not a leprechaun or an elf or a brownie or a leshyi," Bo uttered, "He is not in your rogue's gallery, Gramps, and I am getting eye-strain on top of my hung-over headache and a general sense of having drunk too much and slept too little."

"Welcome to the human world," the blonde muttered under her breath but immediately chastised herself at the sight of the beautiful dismayed face in front of her.

"We are missing something, maybe, he didn't reveal his true form," Bo went on.

"That is why, while you were trying to recognize his mug shot, we have been looking through the lists of fae capable of stripping others of their abilities," Lauren patiently explained, "I am onto the Chinese spirits who endow new-borns with their talents if the parents have been generous enough with their ritual tributes. I wonder if they can operate the other way round, say, dis-endow if someone has been far less than charitable."

"You said he overreacted," Trick mused aloud, "A huffy short-stack with an attitude. Rings a distant bell… A fairy!" His face, scrunched up with the effort of remembering, lit up triumphantly.

"A fairy?" the brunette chortled unbelievingly, "Pretty little things with wings, female and kind?"

"Not all of them, Bo," the bar-tender explained, "There are actually hundreds of types of fairies and, though there are considerably more girls among the species, procreation would be quite problematic without a male or two in the ranks. Some fairies actually deal with abilities in a variety of ways, but the common denominator is a short fuse. A bucketful of trouble has been sparked throughout the centuries due to their petty grudges."

"Sleeping beauty, for instance," Lauren supplied with a thrill to her voice.

"Go on reading, ladies," Trick picked himself up from the low couch he had been crouched on over a book of his own and made his way to his desk and an antiquated rotary phone on it, "I am going to cut some corners and make a few calls."

A dozen of disc rotations and streams of mellifluence later he was back with the goods. "He is a dark fae fairy, recently in town, goes by the name of Dar and comes from somewhere east of Germany, possibly Poland. Short, moody, bad fashion sense. Used to be small-time, only nipping bits and pieces off other people's talents and transferring them onto less gifted ones if the right sum was offered. Transactions like this can easily account for half of surges of inspiration and down-on-my-muse states. After a difficult break-up with his lady-friend, though, he grew bitter and upgraded his business operations to a complete swap of abilities at exorbitant prices, talent transfers for wannabe dancers, singers, actors. A case of a dull-witted jock, who suddenly shines academically, while a nerd, who used to be bullied at school, starts excelling at sports."

"And that's who we managed to royally piss off, wow, we know how to pick them!" Bo was a little awed, "So the dude gave my succu-gift to Kenz and rendered me human instead? And Kenzi is essentially me now, the frightened hungry unbridled me of 10 years ago. And we are sitting on our asses, reading clever books and generally holding forth on my recklessness."

Trick correctly interpreted the last part of her remark as aimed at him and snapped back, "What do you want me to do? Run the street looking out for a baby succubus? Sniffing around? We've got Dyson for that and he certainly knows how to deal with a succubus – plenty of experience."

Lauren winced at the not-so-subtle reminder of how much experience the wolf actually had under his belt on that front but was nobly more concerned with another aspect, which she tried to get across to the others carefully picking her words, "We don't know how Bo's abilities are affecting Kenzi – the fae powers might be diminished or amplified, her humanity, memories and perceptions of what is right and what is wrong might be intact or eroded. Dyson, in his turn, might fail to fully grasp the implications and be his usual overprotective self where self-protection might be a better choice. "

"You mean he can be in danger," Bo cut in and clutched her cell again, "If I don't raise him in another five minutes, I'm going after them. I'll sense around for their auras, go to the Morrigan and make her reel in her dark trickster, I'll … ." Her voice trailed off as the realization caught up with her, "I can do neither of the above, right?"

"You can still call Dyson," Trick reminded while Lauren's eyes were filled with pity and understanding.

Bo frantically tapped the screen and held it to her ear but there came nothing besides the unanswered tone of the call going to voice mail.

Dyson was in no position to pick up his phone that was lying face-down on the dusty floor a foot away from the shifter's motionless body, just where it had fallen out of his jeans ripped off him by the starving attacker. Kenzi, her face awash with tears streaming freely down her cheeks, was bending over him, cradling his head in her lap, attempts at slap-reviving failed and abandoned. She pressed her mouth to the wolf's lips already turning bluish once again but no chi was flowing either into her or out of her. "How the hell did Bo do it?" the girl whimpered in a frenzied panic, "I am just day old, I don't know how to do the resuscitation trick yet…" A word rang out to her as she hiccuped through tears, "Res-suscitation, CPR, does it work on fae? Does the Kenz know how to give CPR?"

Her small palms pressed against Dyson's barely breathing chest and pushed, then pushed again, harder, straining as was her human habit to impart some strength to her weak thin arms. Kenzi startled as she heard a near-inaudible crack of a rib giving way under what was now a succubus hand and saw blue eyes flutter open, spurred into a reaction by sharp pain. Dyson choked and wheezed and drew a tiny painful breath of air into his deprived lungs, the relief brought on by incoming oxygen somewhat tempered by the sensation his now fractured rib was giving him.

"Were you trying to save me or kill me off?" he whispered his gaze trained at the crying and smiling and miserable and happy little face hovering over him.

"I totally skipped the CPR class at school," Kenzi admitted sniffing as she grabbed the wolf's shoulders and gently pulled him up, "Come to think of that, I skipped school."


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

The first overpowering wave of happy relief was at a low ebb and the now familiar dark panic re-claimed the forefront of Kenzi's mind. With utmost care and tenderness she laid Dyson down on the floor and stood up, possessed by the domineering impulse to put as much distance as she could between herself and the person she cared for as much as she was afraid of hurting. The shifter was now breathing steadily, but was still weakened and horizontally bound. His half-open eyes, nevertheless, immediately picked up on the subtle movement as the girl backed towards the door. "What are you doing, Kenzi?" he rasped, his voice firming with a determination that far outmatched the current constraints of his physical state. The girl stilled, caught half-way in her flight intent, and stuttered out what she had for an explanation, "I need to get out of here, away from you, wolfie. I've assaulted and nearly killed you. I don't even know what else I can do to you."

"Whatever you can do, don't you ever run away from me," the man propped himself up on one elbow with a visible strenuous effort, his strength seeping back into him at too sluggish a pace, "Whatever shit happens to us, the only way to waddle through it is to stick together." His slightly glazed eyes never left Kenzi's tensed-up little figure as she took a tiny step back to him. "Besides, I guess you're full for the time being and, thus, I am safe from your flattering advances," he added as a painful after-joke.

"What is it with you and succubi, wolfie?" Kenzi caught on to his tone, "They just can't resist you."

"That's because I am hot," he gave a crooked smile before collapsing back onto the floor, having ridden out his current energy surge.

"That's because you're tasty and have a knack to find yourself at the wrong place at the wrong time," she countered kneeling down at his side and helping him into a sitting position again.

"This is one way of looking at it," the shifter muttered back, "Sometimes it does feel like the right place and the right time.'

Their convo resumed in Dyson's car after a mostly silent ride to the Dal with Kenzi wordlessly darting concerned glances at Dyson and the shifter slumped in the passenger seat, bolstered upright by his will and the seatbelt. She parked the car and turned to face the wolf, steeling herself to speak up but he beat her to the mortifying part. "You weren't fully responsible for your actions, Kenz," he said quietly, extending a hand to cover the girl's white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, "And I, what with my centuries' worth of experience and knowledge of the fae world, simply allowed myself to be ambushed by a mere baby. Lucky, I don't run with a pack any longer, or I'll be the butt of all the post-beer jokes."

"I almost sucked the life out of you," Kenzi shook her head suppressing an unwilling smirk and stubbornly refusing to forgive herself, "Closely after I had a hearty snack on that guy from the store."

"The guy is fine, thanks to your calling Lauren," Dyson replied in a calming tone, "and if it's any consolation, on my very first hunt, back in the day in Scotland, I killed a hedgehog that I wasn't even going to eat – just because I was too intoxicated with the sensation of being a predator in the forest. And the hedgehog actually died and derived no pleasure whatsoever from the process. My own misadventure pales in comparison."

"And you're already trying to lame-joke, means you're better," the girl didn't trust herself to touch Dyson, out of fear to see him flinch as much as of her own urges resurfacing. But the wolf had no such qualms and he scooped her into an uninhibited hug, pressing his chin into the crown of her dark-haired head.

"Are you sure you are well enough to do it?" she whispered into his jacketed chest.

"I am sure we both don't want anyone else to know what is ours to know," Dyson answered in a similar undertone and disengaged to open the door and step out of the car. His second step was clearly losing points in steadiness to his first determined stride and Kenzi was at his side in a flash. "You need Lauren," she started but was cut off. "I don't need Lauren. I need a hair-of-the-dog. If you can just pop out and across the street and get me an energy drink or two out of the vending machine, that should sort me out… more or less," Dyson directed the girl's restless energies.

The half-baked council of war in the inner sanctum of the Dal was not yielding much by way of decisions and the tension was ratcheting up by the minute with Dyson still MIA and Kenzi somewhere out there, running wild. Bo was chomping at the bit from sheer inactivity, Trick overusing the phone and straining his connections in an attempt to get information on either of his friends' whereabouts, Lauren still digging into the books.

"A location spell," the bar-tender uttered throwing the receiver back onto its ornate cradle, "Get back to the shack you call home and get me something of Kenzi, I'll try to enact a spell on that." Bo was glad of the excuse to spring to her legs and into some action.

"Hale, we need to inform Hale," Lauren felt she should also contribute, "He might use the police resources."

A vocal _No!_ rang from somewhere up and the three occupants of the room looked towards the rickety stairs leading down from the main hall of the Dal. A pale, against-type unkempt Kenzi was making her way down, her slender form framed by Dyson's tall leanness, one of his hands looping heavily around her shoulders in what seemed a protective embrace. In an instant the room was thrown into a confused motion as voices were raised and feet shuffled. Bo rushed over to her friends, slinging her arms around both of them, tugging them closer as Trick and Lauren were watching the family reunion with their usual composure heavily dented.

When Bo finally dis-attached herself from the pair Lauren joined the group and added a professional touch to the proceedings. "I'd like to check on Kenzi, see how her body is coping with the shock," she announced in a cold voice of reason and led the younger girl over to the farther corner of the room with Bo following them as if she couldn't bare to put any distance between herself and her dearest person. In the meanwhile, Dyson seized this opportunity to finally let himself rock on his feet and stumbled across to take a heavy seat onto the couch; when he next forced his eyes open he saw Trick's inquisitive brown gaze boring into him. The Blood King, who had been standing apart from his younger friends, had had time to absorb the pale radiance of Kenzi's skin – the telltale sign of a succubus just fed, the grey-faced exhaustion of the wolf, not usually the one to be easily tired. On consideration, the old fae decided to refrain from asking the obvious question, the answer to which he didn't want to hear out loud.

"You don't want anyone to know," he said instead, his simple words conveying understanding.

"Hopefully, Bo won't suss it out," the wolf admitted easily, knowing better than to lie to his king, who was also a husband and a father to a succubus himself.

"Bo was never overly perceptive as a fae, don't think she'll be any more so as a new human," Trick replied and changed tack to ask without asking, "You are holding up, but knowing you I am still concerned."

"I'm ok, just need some quiet alone horizontal time," Dyson dismissed his worries, "Kenzi is the one who needs our care most of all."

"She and Bo, they both do," the older fae replied solemnly, "Coming into powers unexpectedly is hard but being stripped of them should be excruciating. I might have lost my heiress to the throne, but I don't want to lose my grand-daughter."

In the other corner at that time Lauren finished her perfunctory check and declared the new succubus perfectly healthy and safely well-nourished.

"The guy from the store proved more filling than a chocolate ice-cream with peanuts," Kenzi supplied blushing a little, "Though there's no saying how long it's gonna take for me to get the munchies again."

"Talking from experience, Kenz, should be another 12 hours or so," Bo held her bestie's friend squeezing it for comfort, "Which means we have time until about tomorrow afternoon."

"Time for what?" Lauren raised an eyebrow at her lover.

"Time for you and Trick and Dyson to find Dar and get him to switch us back and time for me to start training Kenzi as it seems about the only task left for me, a powerless fae, a toothless ex-succubus," Bo explained almost cheerfully, "I'll have to teach you everything I've learnt about controlling and harnessing your inner chi-sucker, Kenz. And you have to give some serious thought to calling your official boy-friend and cluing him in on what's going on."

"Oh, please, no Hale," Kenzi begged tearfully, "Not just yet. I am so not ready for this, for any of this." The younger girl's voice trailed off, her eyes fell down with guilt and fear but were immediately confronted with the dark material of Bo's top as she hugged her bestie to her generous bosom. "It's ok, Kenzi, or at least, it will be," the brunette practically cooed over the younger girl, who would have cried had she any more tears left in here, "If we can fix it fast enough, he doesn't even need to know at all, maybe as a flashback anecdote, something to laugh at over a glass of something."

"There will always be something you can't ever fix," Kenzi breathed out almost inaudibly and for a second her newly modified self was processing the source of her guilty scruples – whether they were coming from having slept with another man or from recollecting the deed with much less compunction and much more relish than was to be expected. It was Dyson's nearly dying that was giving her guilty conscience, the girl realized in a vertiginous moment of self-awareness, not the fact that she had seduced her bestie's ex and had cheated on her boy-friend.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

**Author's Note: I should have probably set this story in time from the start, but my idea doesn't exactly fit with the developments in late season 3 and season 4, so, I'll have to go with an unspecified moment somewhere mid-season 3, after Bo's dawning but before the Taft-related events, when my LG universe swerved in a slightly different direction to make all of these possible. Or you can take it as an alternative post season 4. No Tamsin simply because I love her and don't want to relegate her to a bit part as there's no proper storyline for her in this fic.**

While the girls were having their heart-to-heart, the other three retreated discreetly to another corner of the room to map out the further plan of action.

"The fastest way to find Dar is to get the Morrigan in on that, seeing as he is one of her people," Lauren did not seem particularly happy making this announcement, "And under the circumstances, with Bo unable to stand up to her, it should fall on you, Trick, to secure an interview with her."

"By presenting Evony with the information you'll be effectively giving her ammo against all of us," the old fae shook his head with a meditative air, "Dyson is not exactly at his best, Kenzi is an untrained baby, and the rest of us are more of the brain-no-muscle-to-speak-of variety to put it flatteringly."

"Trick's right, that would be too much of a Christmas treat for the Morrigan," Dyson cut in hastily to cover the bar-tender's slip regarding his current weakened state, "We need someone dark and someone we can pressurize into helping us without risking full exposure."

"Vex!" the vote was unanimous with the blonde, the sandy-haired and the balding heads nodding in agreement.

"Coming along for the ride?" Dyson turned to the doctor with an open invitation, "I need someone to do persuasive talking while I am doing the growling."

For a second, Lauren looked uncomfortable at the idea of pitching in with pressurizing the Mesmer, action not being her area of expertise, but a look at the girls, still locked in an embrace across the room, filled her with tender protectiveness towards the one she was so used to thinking of as doing most of the protection around their part of the fae world. She plastered a decisive look onto her face and squared her shoulders before giving a dignified nod, "I am coming, Dyson."

#######

Bo stepped into the now filling bar and turned to beckon to Kenzi. "Ready?"

The other girl made a tentative entrance and froze on the threshold giving the room a sweep with her pale grey eyes. Trick was busy behind the counter, catering to his swelling clientele, Bo was holding out a supportive hand towards her bestie, the fae at the tables were nonchalantly chatting and drinking, without paying the girls any particular attention. Kenzi took a deep breath, as if before taking a plunge into a freezing-looking lake, and followed the brunette, who led her friend to a lonely table in the corner and pushed her into a seat facing the crowd.

"You are still full now, Kenz," Bo was telling her in a steady confident tone, "and aren't likely to fly off the handle. Look around, see, appreciate and make yourself turn away. It's like you're in a candy shop – everything is mouthwatering but you know that you have just had a steak and you don't have enough cash on you and you simply walk away."

"Actually, I usually lift a wallet, get the candies and add them to the steak in a slim hope it will fill up my tits," Kenzi muttered forlornly, "But I can see your point, my culinary-minded friend."

"Ok, let's take a different angle," the older girl sighed before venturing on a more dangerous tack, "You remember the taste of the chi flowing into you?"

Kenzi gulped as the words brought back to her the deliciousness of the energy entering her body, the sweet taste with strong woodsy overtones, filling her, boosting her, making her crave action, making her imagine herself running wild somewhere in the forest, breathing in the nipping air.

"And you remember the face of the person who was giving you his chi – the face that was first a display of pleasure and relish and then started filling gradually with a deathly exhaustion. That's the moment when you need to think about how bad the sweets are for your teeth and make yourself stop," Bo's voice was suddenly snapping orders.

Kenzi's mind's eye filled with Dyson's drained face, his blue eyes fluttering closed in weariness and she yelped in near physical pain of her own.

"I am not saying it's easy," Bo's sympathetic hand squeezed the girl's cold fingers splayed on the table, "I started this whole mess by taking one too many from Lauren, remember? But that's something you need to imprint into your mind until we swap back, Kenz: it's not about not feeding, it's about stopping in time. It's about being considerate towards your partner, watching out for dangerous signs, it's about putting his or her safety above everything and imbedding it into your MO."

"No her for me, pretty please, this walking awesomeness here is a dick-only girl," Kenzi replied lightly, though in fact she was listening eagerly, her pulsating brain taking in, absorbing, storing for future use the lesson her friend was giving her. The scene with Dyson was on a constant loop in her memories, she was going through it frame by frame until she hit upon the moment Bo had been talking about – upon the moment she should have stopped taking from the half-conscious wolf.

"I'm tracking you, Bobolicious,' the girl slowly nodded her understanding, "It's just that I let my hunger blind me to everything else."

"And that's why we need to keep you nourished. If you starve, you might lose it again," the ex-succubus was clearly speaking from experience, "Are you sure you don't want to call Hale? He should be more than willing to help you out."

"No, no Hale," Kenzi shook her head emphatically, "Sounds like a nice piece of perverted logic, but right now I just can't put my boy-friend to the risk of doing the nasty with the yet unbalanced me. Not until I am a bit more trained or get myself a spare boy-friend."

"The guy you fed from was human," Bo reminded her judiciously, "And Hale is fae, he is much stronger, he can stop you."

"No, believe me he can't, even Dyson couldn't… I mean, Dyson couldn't always stop you from taking too much when you were still learning self-control, right? And he's stronger than Hale," the new succubus was groping with words to convince her friend without letting slip the very bit of information she was desperate to hide, "I am so unbalanced right now, like a teenager with her hormones all over the place. No Hale until I am a little more settled."

"Ok," Bo conceded easily, "then another important lesson – look around, zero in on someone suitably appetizing." Kenzi swept the room and her eyes soon landed on a tall guy at the counter talking to a girl on a stool next to him. "Concentrate on him, on how sincere his smile is, on how twinkly his eyes are. Do you see anything else about him? Do you think he is interested in his friend in any sexual way?" the older woman was talking with an easy authority of experience.

"Ye-es," Kenzi gasped in amazement, "I can see something – there's a slight radiance around him, like coolish blue. Nay, I wouldn't say he's really interested, more like "You'll do if I get sufficiently hammered or if I don't stumble on someone more hard-on-inducing. What a dick, leading a girl on like that!"

Bo gave a soft saddish smile, "I knew it, though I can't see it any longer myself."

"What a self-absorbed fool I've been," Kenzi was lighting-quick latching onto the emotion beneath the words, "It hasn't been a walk in an amusement park for you either, my boobacious bestie. Let's face it, I am not the only frightened, lost girl at this table."

Bo leaned forward in her seat to take both of Kenzi's slender hands into her grip. "I never realized before how enormously brave you need to be, a human in the fae world. And you, Kenz, you always were just that and some more – standing tall, not cowed by all the powerful creatures around. And I am just not sure I can be the same. I am used to looking around the crowd like I am at a buffet party and not I am like a rabbit with my ears shaking in fear that there might be a hungry fox at the next table who might be interested in making me his dinner."

"Well, don't be afraid of a fox when you have a wolf on your side plus a half-baked succubus," Kenzi grinned archly, "Besides, your grandpa actually owns the place. Bravery is something you've got in spades, you just haven't tapped into your resources yet, Bo. Maybe you are not the only one who can do some lecturing, I might give you a couple of classes myself. Kenzi on how to be a dazzling human among fae."

"I might take you up on that later," Bo had to admit Kenzi's idea made sense, "But for now, on with our lesson. Look around and find an aura burning hotter than that bluish jerk, you need to know how to recognize a willing potential partner with chi to offer."


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Vex was practically doubled over with laughter that was bursting out of him in short stifled giggles. "The succubus pissed off a fairy and got her magic tits powerless? Hilarious!" he chuckled in delight as soon as he could trust himself to talk again.

"First, technically it was more of Kenzi's doing," Lauren cut in and added as the image of the aforementioned body parts sprang to the forefront of her mind, "And second, I wouldn't call Bo's … well … assets diminished even without the fae powers."

"Besides, aren't you the right one to talk of powerlessness? The Mesmer with impotence issues?" Dyson stepped closer to the dark fae, towering over him with deliberate menace in his stance, "The one who is a hairbreadth away from getting up my wolf's nose for real. The one who, should I be reluctant to get my claws dirty with his entrails, is still hunted by the Red caps, by his disgruntled dark employer, by half of this city."

"It's a fair exchange, Vex," the doctor dangled the carrot, "Dyson can get you protection, I can work on your wonky Mesmer potency – all in return for a piece of information you, with your connections, will have no trouble providing."

Vex's vividly mobile features settled into a comic effort at pondering matters. "I get you Dar – you keep me safe, I refuse to cooperate – you sic the Red caps on my trail. You have really done my maths for me, doc," the Mesmer whined, "And I really prefer your blue to your yellow, wolf. Can you turn off the amber in such a close proximity to my vital organs?"

"Have we got a deal?" Dyson grumbled, his eyes resuming their human colour.

"Wouldn't call it a bargain exactly," Vex drawled making a study of his black-enameled nails, "I might, in fact, get a better price for the information I already possess from a higher bidder…"

"If by a higher bidder you mean the Morrigan, then let me remind you, you're currently not her favourite lap dog," the shifter grabbed the collar of the shorter man's fancy leather jacket and gave him a teeth-rattling shake in the interests of improved understanding, "She might order you skinned before you have time to share your intel. And if she doesn't, there will be a wolf and a succubus to follow through with the intent. Don't forget that Bo's powers are not gone, simply relocated. I think I can persuade Kenzi to pitch in, should you betray us."

"Still sounds like a rip-off of a deal to me, but I am in a benevolent mood," the Mesmer huffed, dusting off his disturbed outfit, "Say hello to the girls and I'll be in touch."

####

Kenzi was weaving her way through the throng at the Dal, sent on a field trip by her coach, on the lookout for an aura suitably burning to indicate a willing chi-donor. "Fae to fit any taste," she was telling herself in the process, "A disinterested one, a gay one, an ugly one, an overeager one –hey, keep it zipped! Gross!... The lot of a succubus isn't as easy as I thought it to be." It took her quite a while to finally settle on a fae who was appropriately enthusiastic, without spilling into disgustingly so, and young and appealing to the eye enough to proceed with getting her feed. Kenzi parked her pert behind on a bar stool next to the selected snack and pasted her lovelies smile on. "Hi there, handsome! We don't want it to be a lonely night, right?" she said going for the blunt approach and laid her fingers onto the guy's hand sending a dose of seductive juices into him. The male fae, who had been obviously open to offers from the start, wasn't about to stand on ceremony as he smiled his complete agreement and proved his eagerness to cooperate by leaning down to the petite woman with a lip-locking intention.

Kenzi almost twitched in anticipation of some sweet chi exchanging bodies but her mouth stopped half an inch away from its target as she heard a stuttering incredulous voice behind her back. "Kenzi?! What are you doing?!" Hale was having difficulty believing his own trusted pair of twenty-twenty-visioned eyes. That evening he had finally managed to wrap up a particularly tedious paperwork-heavy case at the police station, failed to raise anyone of the gang on the phone and had only just arrived at the bar to catch up with his currently elusive girl-friend kissing a strange fae.

Kenzi's expressive face was still retaining a good deal of lustful even as it was veering from confused to guilty. She turned away from her would-be partner in crime with a visible effort of will and focused on the despairing siren in front of her. "I can explain, Hale," she breathed out automatically before the full realization of her predicament kicked in. "Maybe I can," she corrected herself, "It's a bit complicated."

"How complicated can it be, Kenz?" Hale was fast progressing from devastated to fuming, "You flirting and kissing another dude? What is it? A lame attempt to get back at me for not going against my family and my people's traditions for your sake often enough? Or whatever is your current pet peeve?"

"Lame?! Me and lame don't go in one sentence," Kenzi was gathering steam herself, "Pet peeve? That is what you think of me –peevish? A peevish pet? Because I under-appreciate your juggling act of keeping in with your family and having a relationship with me? You are trying to eat your cake and still have it, siren, and I am getting tired of being this damned pastry!"

"So you'd rather be a tart than a cake," the siren spat out, hurt into blunt insensitivity, and immediately got his cheek slapped with a surprising strength that made his teeth clatter. When he finally turned his stinging face to look at the girl, whose backhand had evidently improved, she was already gone, melted into the crowd, melted out of the bar.

"For such an accomplished singer, I am such a lousy speaker," Hale murmured to himself, remorseful and insulted in equal measure.

###

Kenzi found herself before the door of their more than modest abode, dazed and tearful. Her heart was smarting from her boy-friend's words, her stomach was aching from the budding hunger. "First, I became a monster, now I stepped up my game by going sluttish," she told herself in a miserable undertone and heard a soft chuckle in response.

"Just my kind of girl," the Mesmer materialized from the nearest shadow and measured the ex-human with an admiring and lewd look.

"What are you doing here, Vex?" Kenzi tried to collect her scattered wits about her and crossed her arms across her chest in an internationally recognized posture of scared defiance.

"Actually, I was going to report on my findings to your merry sunshine gang as I was courteously asked by the curly muscled one and by the brainy blonde one," the dark fae sidled over to the girl, "I have been employed to find a fairy of interest, by the way. But on seeing you here all alone, so charmingly enhanced by your new powers, my thoughts changed tack. Have your boobs actually got bigger, hon?"

Kenzi's arms locked tighter around her and she said as firrnly as she could master, "You can report to me and get lost promptly after."

"Willingly, my little succubus," Vex smarmed, inching another tiny bit closer, "Nothing as yet on Dar's whereabouts but I've got wind of a certain dark fae he's quite friendly with. I'll get to question him first thing tomorrow morning."

"So skedaddle and see you when you have the goods," the girl turned on her heels and made to pass by the Mesmer and into the house.

"Aren't you a teeny bit hungry, hon?" the dark fae's mellifluous voice insinuated, "I can see your eyes glowing electric blue, my sweet chi sucker. Don't tell me you are ready to pass up a free morsel of tasty dark super sexy Mesmer energy." His hand weaved itself around the girl slender waist as he pulled her towards him in a fluid motion.

Kenzi's heart clenched in disgust and outrage as tightly as her core clenched in hunger pangs. Her hands pressed against the leather of his chest and pushed but not strongly enough to break his grip.

"You can be yourself with me – a ravenous succubus. You don't have to be afraid of hurting me, cupcake," the man's smooth inflected voice was flowing into her ear, comforting and tempting, his breath hot on her exposed neck, "I like to be hurt, baby."

The girl's arms were still keeping him a few inches away from her body but there was little resolve in her resistance. The stomach-churning repugnance was fading, a second fiddle to her nascent doubts sowed by the mesmer's words. Wasn't he offering just what she needed – someone to feed from without remorse, without fear, without feelings. A mere moment before the Kenzi resurfaced from under the heavy layer of blinding craving and could respond with a punch to the seducer's face, Vex was prised from her and thrown across the drive back into the bushes with great force as a tall figure wedged itself between them and the girl heard a low growling of a predator at its angriest.

"What the hell you think you're doing, Kenz?" Dyson gritted, beyond livid.

"Debating with myself whether to suck him dry or knee him in the balls," the girl faintly admitted before her crystalline grey eyes, pleading and miserable, locked with his yellow, wild and enraged, "Help me, D-man."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

"You need to tell Hale," Dyson leaned over the tiny figure, curled into a defensive ball on the old couch in what passed for the living-room in the crackshack. The girl shook her head obstinately, her lips pursed, her face still flushed with shame at being caught in the act she would have never dreamed to be caught in under normal circumstances. "If the filthy creep I unpeeled off you and threw out is to be trusted, finding Dar won't be as easy as we hoped it would, so you might find yourself stuck for the time being," the wolf tried to reason with the little succubus, "Don't be stubborn, you're just deferring the inevitable. He has to be in the know, he is your boy-friend, he can help you out."

"Really?!" Kenzi's voice was ringing with tension when she looked up into the shifter's face, "You are the expert at dealing with a crazy chi-hoover at her hungriest, you tell me – can he? Can he stop me if I am taking too much? You couldn't."

It was Dyson's turn to look abashed, if not for his trademark scruff he would be definitely caught blushing. "You had the element of surprise on your side, Kenz, and a misleadingly harmless look," he grumbled not without a touch of self-deprecating humour, "And I made the classic mistake of underestimating my opponent. Guess, if I had been more conscious of what force of nature I was dealing with, I might have stood a better chance of interrupting your feed."

"Hale is younger and weaker and not so experienced, I will never forgive myself if I hurt him," the girl tearfully admitted.

"So, hurting me was much lighter on your conscience," the wolf tried for a joking tone but stumbled over his own words at the sight of the distraught little face sporting two tear tracks in the melting layer of make-up.

"I am sorry, I didn't mean that," he sighed, sitting down next to the girl and putting an arm around her trembling shoulders.

"Besides, if I am unflatteringly honest, I have a couple of ulterior motives for not coming clean yet," Kenzi whispered leaning into his warmth. "Our major problem with Hale has always been my humanity. I know he cares for me and he is the new breed of broad-minded young fae, unlike the old heavily prejudiced fluffball here," she nudged the wolf with a sharp elbow to indicate a joke, "But it's been hard for him to reconcile his family and me and all the things he grew up used to. He is not the one for confrontation and confrontation is what he gets every time he tries to introduce me into his world. And call me a bitch, but I don't want to make his task easier. He has to stand up for me, he has to learn to accept me one hundred per cent. Call me a selfish bitch, but I want to be number one in his life, to be put above his family and friends. And if I tell him I am fae now and he beams at me all happy toothy smile, I think that will just kill me. The realization he wants me fae."

"That's not fair on him," the shifter contradicted her softly, "I see your point, Kenz, I do, but now _you_ are being prejudiced here. Maybe, he won't be happy about you turning fae, maybe he doesn't care at all whether you are human or fae."

"Hey, wolfie, you're not enough of an actor to sell that one to me, we both know he will be jumping with joy – the perfect solution to all his troubles. He'll be getting his Kenzi and his piece of mind in one go," Kenzi smiled mirthlessly, "And also, what if after he's tried an enhanced version of me and then me and Bobo get swapped back, what if he doesn't like the good old human Kenz minus the super-crotch powers?"

"Really?" Dyson quirked an eyebrow in incredulous amusement, ready to laugh it off but a tiny niggling germ of a thought wriggled itself out of his subconscious. Would he himself put to the test his own feelings for Bo now that she was just a woman? Would he be able not to let himself be afraid of squeezing her too tight or riding her too fast? Would touching her human skin bring equal measure of ecstasy as it used to? The wolf fidgeted uncomfortably as it occurred to him that since the swap happened he hadn't given his ex-lover much thought at all. Actually, the last skin-to-skin interaction he had had with Bo gave him more creeps than tingles. He creased his brow thinking hard and trying to put a date to that particular occurrence –was it before or after Bo lost her powers? And why did it suddenly seem so important in the first place? His musing was unceremoniously cut short with a pinch on his bicep and he was brought back to the current moment and the current problem.

Kenzi unfurled out of her balled-up position and was now staring anxiously at him, her grey eyes shining with an alarming degree of electric blue. "Do you see it, D-man?" she gave him another pinch just to make sure she had his full attention, "I just can't tell Hale about it. And also, right now I am more scared than hungry but any minute the balance can change. And you threw away my snack."

"I'd rather go for a full Brazilian than see Vex's paws on you," Dyson muttered darkly.

"And earlier tonight Hale ruined my much-promising date at the Dal," Kenzi whispered ruefully and Dyson had a couple of seconds to toy with an image of Kenzi getting all hot and heavy with a strange fae hunk in Trick's barrel room. Oddly, the image smarted no less than seeing Vex hitting on the girl.

"I think I should go somewhere less frequented by my friends, a dark fae bar maybe?" Kenzi weighed her options, picking herself off the couch, but Dyson suddenly pulled her down again, this time taking hold of her both forearms and looking right into her face.

"You aren't going to a dark fae bar, it's dangerous and … just yuck," he started falteringly, "You need to feed, feed off me then, until you find another way, until you tell Hale or we find Dar."

Kenzi gulped in surprise, her eyes open wide, desire already setting butterflies into free flight in her stomach.

"If I h-hurt you again…," she stuttered.

"You won't. I am prepared and you're hopefully a bit better at self-control," the wolf countered.

"If Hale ever knows," Kenzi voiced another of her chief worries.

"He won't. Besides, we already have something to hide," he smirked, far less than proud of himself.

"If Bo guesses, you'll lose her," the girl pressed on, knowing full well she only wanted the man to sweep her arguments aside.

"I think I've already lost her, Kenz," Dyson uttered, "For so many reasons that I am ready to add one more to the list."

"You are ready to take your chances with me… for me?" the little succubus felt her hunger gnawing at her insides, but the reins of her self-control still holding .

"That's what _you_'ve been doing for me for as long as I can remember," the shifter let go of her wrists, giving her room for a decision, possibility for a retreat.

Kenzi lowered herself into his lap, quickly shifting position to straddle his sitting from. "Are you sure it's you talking and not because I might have succu-juiced you a little – I am still not sure how my magic touch works?" she asked as her fingers got busy unbuttoning his shirt.

"Search me," the wolf responded with a grin, foregoing any attempts to sort out the patchwork of his confused thoughts, and the newly turned fae proceeded to do as she was told. "Are you sure Bo is not coming back any time soon?" his question came out all shaky, brought on by the remnants of his caution.

"No, last I checked she was going over to Lauren's, even minus fae stamina, that should take a while," the girl uttered her own last consciously worded sentence before succumbing to the full force of their mingled urges and desires.

####

"Does it feel different?" Bo anxiously asked, breaking their kiss and looking searchingly into the blonde's smiling face.

"It does," Lauren's eyes were positively twinkling, with joy and quite a bit of mischief, "Just for once, I don't think I'll get any bruises from your grip, only a hicky or two. And I don't feel like I'll need a six pack of Red Bull to sort me out afterwards."

"Ok, I got it – all human and gente. But did you enjoy it at all?" Bo's insecurity was obvious in her voice.

"I should confess to a fair degree of gloating," the doctor's hand slid across her lover's chest, fanned out fingers crawling along the velvety smoothness of the skin, "It used to be my place to wallow in uncertainty. Am I enough for Bo? Did she fully enjoy herself with me?" Lauren gazed into the other woman's chocolate eyes, full of inner torture the taste of which she herself knew only too well and her hand started on a downward course, tantalizingly brushing Bo's nipples and mapping a hot trail south. The doctor's lips came to within a millimeter from Bo's quivering mouth and stopped to whisper, "It was everything I have been dreaming of, everything we have always had minus your constrains and my doubts. I am in love with Bo, not with the succubus."

"Maybe Dar is a blessing in colour-uncoordinated disguise?" Bo said teasingly, her lips curving in a smile, her body tingling under the clever fingers, smooth and provocative at the same time, "Maybe we'll all be better off if we never find him?"

Lauren's confident hands never faltered but her heart practically somersaulted in her heavily rising chest. The words she had just heard might well be her own, only without the 'maybes' and without the half-joking flippancy.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Vex spun on his high heels and swiped a bottle of single malt off the low table in a circular gesture. "So I was tipped off and went to that bar and was just about to lay my hands on the bloody fairy but something put the wind up the bugger and he did a runner. No idea what spooked him – I was looking my absolutely sexiest best. Anyway, he has gone to ground so thoroughly that it might take significantly longer to track him down," he announced before taking a swig straight out of the bottle, which earned him a disgusted look from the actual owner of the whiskey – Trick.

"You mean you barged in like a highly conspicuous bull in black leather into a china shop and lost him on your own Dark fae home field," the bartender said bluntly, considering for a second repossessing the bottle but dismissing the idea on hygienic grounds.

"I mean the girls had better prepare for a longer stint of doing each other," the Mesmer giggled at his own double entendre, "I am referring to their reversed roles, of course."

A moment of thoughtfulness settled upon the occupants of the room as each of them contemplated what that spelled for all of them. A perspicacious observer, someone like Trick and completely unlike the self-involved Mesmer, might have caught a preoccupied complicit glance exchanged between the wolf and the youngest of the girls while Lauren and the ex-succubus looked considerably less apprehensive. Bo, in actual fact, found herself torn between two conflicting feelings – the one of happy anticipation of some more human times with her lover and the one of insecurity at this prolongation of her vulnerable state. Snapping out of it, she stepped forward and snatched the bottle out of Vex's hand to tip some of its contents unceremoniously down her throat, which brought on a hiccupping fit and watering eyes. "That's some knock-out stuff, Grandpa," she complained, "Have you ramped up the potency of your drinks or is it my human me again?"

Trick gave her with a chiding look but no answer and addressed a more pressing issue instead, "That seems quite odd that Dar should have run from Vex, he had no reason to be apprehensive of a fellow Dark fae unless Vex forgot to tell us something."

The Mesmer summoned a look of complete innocence and spread his hands in a gesture of bemusement, "I am atypically honest with you, kids. Maybe someone put a word in the fairy's ear that I might be searching for him on your behalf."

"He thought he had messed a little with a human and a vacuum-headed light fae but then he was kindly informed it was the unaligned fae –the granddaughter of the Blood King himself he had crossed," Dyson mused aloud, "One hell of a reason to avoid new acquaintances."

Bo shot him a scolding look but decided to let "the vacuum-headed" remark slip for the time being and wisely focused on the gist of his words, "Someone must have warned him. The question is who?"

"Why would I complicate my own work?" Vex was the first to protest his innocence.

"None of us had any reasons to sabotage the Dar-hunt," Lauren added calmly, "But who, besides us, could have found out what happened?"

"Let's not hurl accusations for now," Trick went on to diffuse the situation, "Might well be a coincidence. Or Dar might know himself to be chased by someone else altogether. Whichever the case is, Vex is to keep looking, literally searching high and low and I do recommend due diligence, Mesmer, unless you fancy a showdown with your old red-capped mates."

"In the meanwhile," he continued in low confident tones of the one born into power with his finger pointed at Bo for more emphasis, "You get yourself together and try to keep a low profile, we can't have anyone know about your current state. Kenzi keeps training and talks to Hale asap. Now that we are obviously no closer to resolving this situation fast, he needs to be brought up to speed."

"Up to speed on what?" a voice rang out from the door, making the present company gave a synchronized start and turn. Immersed in their separate thoughts and emotions, the gang failed to hear the young siren make an understated entrance and were now exchanging guilty looks, with the exception of Vex, who took advantage of the distraction to relieve Bo of the bottle she was still holding.

Hale was peering into his friends' faces, looking for clues to account for their secret meeting and general ill-at-ease appearance, his dark eyes finally landing on the sweet face of his girl. "Kenzi? What's going on?" he prompted but she refused to look up from the floorboards. His words, however, served to send the others into a disorderly exit accompanied by half-hearted excuses about giving the couple some space. Dyson, who was the last to make for the door, put a steady hand onto her shoulder and bent over to whisper a hurried _"you have to do it"_ into her ear. He paused at the threshold to look back at the tiny frozen figure and his partner of many years with a dreading expression to his usually untroubled face and his conscience gave him a massive pang, which was somehow equal measure his guilt for sleeping with Kenzi as well as for leaving Kenzi on her own in this particular spot.

Once the little succubus knew they were alone in the room, she dared unlock her gaze from the floor and met Hale's anxious look. "You'd better put something solid under your butt, Hale," she murmured, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her jacket and balling them up into nervous fists, "I've got quite a story to tell and lots of strong parasite words to use to help with my chills."

The siren obediently flopped down onto the couch, recently vacated by Trick, and urged her in a shaky undertone, "Out with it, baby, don't overdo the suspense."

The suspense actually dissipated in the course of Kenzi's narrative giving way to a feeling best described as something approaching amazed elation. Soon enough Hale couldn't keep himself seated any longer and made a beeline for the girl, who was by then relating Vex's findings, or rather the lack thereof, in an induced monotone.

"And you were keeping it from me why? Did you think I'd be mad with you or freak out or what?" he cried out squeezing her in a tight hug, "Oh, baby, it's simply amazing, you becoming fae, a succubus at that!"

The girl's huge eyes bored into his ecstatic face as she asked with an unKenzi-like constraint, "You mean you're ok with this? You fell in love with a human and now I am something else entirely and I might stay this way for fae-knows how long."

"Of course, I am ok with this!" the siren exclaimed enthusiastically, "More than ok, I have to admit!"

"And you're not afraid of me?" Kenzi's voice went positively arctic, her worst fears coming true before her very eyes, her human essence, preserved in her memory if not in her body, feeling the sting of the snub, unintentional as it might have been.

"Why would I be afraid?" the man started saying before the realization hit home, "Oh, you mean, afraid of your powers? But that's you, Kenz, powers or not, and you'll soon learn to control them the way Bo did. And I am fae, I can meet you move for move."

His chipper tone, however, had quite the opposite effect on the girl from the one intended as her eyes slit in barely concealed anger and her thin hands shot out to grab the sides of Hale's face and pull him down to her. Her lips locked with his and Kenzi started to pull with all her new might, extracting a wisp of energy from him, watching his face register surprised delight soon morphing into awe as he felt his knees buckle under him.

Kenzi stopped as soon as she saw a hint of grey creep into Hale's skin tone, she pushed him away and stood, her shoulders squared, her look defiant, as the siren was coughing and catching his breath, bent in two with his hands pressing into his knees for balance.

"That's what I can do to you, Hale," she stated flatly, "Are you still happy to have a succubus girl-friend?"


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

They were sitting on the couch, side by side, without touching but warmed by each other's body-heat, comforted by each other's presence.

"I am so sorry, Kenzi," Hale said finally, "In my selfish excitement I didn't realize how hard it should be on you."

"And I am sorry for resorting to such a demonstration of my lethal kiss," the girl passed a caring hand across his still sweaty brow, "Are you Ok?"

"A bit jelly-legged but serves me right," the siren admitted and added after a minute's thought, "Human or fae, you mean the world to me, Kenzi, just tell me what to do to help you get through this."

"Be patient, be there for me, be there for Bo – she's having a rough time of it, too, maybe even rougher than me," the girl lowered her head onto his sympathetic shoulder, "And be ready to go without sex for a while, until I am sure I can restrain myself from cleaning you out of all your chi."

"Well, you managed to stop during the kiss today," the siren reasoned and Kenzi had to bury her face into his sleeve to hide the treacherous blush. "Well, I wasn't really hungry.. . And I can keep myself in check, more or less, when we kiss but anything beyond that can send me spiraling out of control," she finally stumbled out a half-truthful explanation, hoping with all her heart it wouldn't occur to her boy-friend to wonder why she was low on appetite. Before any of such thought could have sprung forward Kenzi went on more firmly, "Guess, I'll have to do some dieting for the first time in my life. I'll try to sustain myself on snips of your chi, but we are back to kissing-hugging stage for now, Hale."

#####

"You'd better stay in the car, it's a rough neighbourhood," Dyson cautioned getting out and leaving the two women in slightly uncomfortable silence, soon broken by Bo. "Just a while ago I wouldn't have thought twice before beating him to that dodgy pawn shop-slash-illegal-gun seller," she sighed regretfully, "And now I don't even need to be tied down to stay put, safely tucked in the car."

"Just a while ago you were ready to kick me to the curb not to kill me in the sack," Lauren countered turning to face her lover, "and look at us now – last night was the first truly unbridled passion we've ever had. The first time I saw the truly unrestrained Bo, honest and majestic."

"And human," the brunette muttered, tasting the word on the tip of her tongue.

"And human," Lauren nodded making the word sound like a compliment and changed tack. "Are you sure you need it?" she asked pointing with her chin in the direction Dyson had disappeared.

"For the very first time in my life I want a gun," Bo answered resolutely, "Dyson is a wolf, Kenzi is a sexual predator, you are a genius, And I am just a girl with great tits. I want to feel like I also have something to offer up in resistance when the chips are down. I want to feel more protected and more … protective."

"Of me?" the blonde asked softly, her hand sliding over Bo's clenched one in her lap, "You don't need to. And you don't need a gun, you have a lot more strings to your bow, besides the aforementioned great tits – you are smart and brave and your big heart makes you so much stronger. You just need to pick up on some human resourcefulness."

"Oh, Lauren," Bo whispered her brown eyes dewy with unshed tears, "You can always find the words for me, I know you're right, I know I have all of you and I should be all of that. But it's just so scary, so unusually scary. I am like a big strapping bully boy who comes back to school after the summer break and finds out that the other boys have shot up during the summer and he is now the smallest and the weakest of them and … And it's like Kenzi told me once when we had just met – find the toughest kid on the playground and make friends with them. "

"And you have," the doctor cut in smiling, "You have all of us, the toughest kids, so to say – the wolf, and the sexual predator and the genius, the ones you have been always taking care of and who are ready to take care of you."

"Guess, Kenzi has already started training me back, in a way," Bo couldn't help a brief smile herself, "But I still need a gun."

Her last words were punctuated by a warning rap of the knuckles on the window and Dyson hopped back into the car with a paper bag in his hand. "The odds are in favour of me regretting it sooner or later but that's for you," he grumbled shoving the bag into Bo's lap, "just bare in mind that you first ascertain the menace, then take aim and only then fire, preferably not to kill and only in this order."

The ex-succubus grabbed the bag, her spirits significantly buoyed by the feel of the weapon in her hand as much as by the pep-talk, but her smooth brow immediately creased in frustration. "Shikes! Where do I keep it?" she moaned, "Too bulky for my cleavage space, too angular for my boot. Damn, it was so much more convenient with the blades."

####

Having deposited the girls at the crachshack Dyson drove to his loft with an ambitious hope of grabbing a shower and getting some rest, much required by his exhausted body. His mind, however, seemed to disagree with the plan as the shower that brought relief to his overexerted muscles summoned unwanted memories to the fore and the dreamed-of rest provided for more thinking time than was desirable under the circumstances. Then the shifter spent some nerve-wrecking minutes tossing and turning in his bed, images of Kenzi flooding his senses – Kenzi in his arms, passionate and unrestrained, Kenzi burning with shame in front of Hale, sad and crushed.

All his attempts at relaxing and cleansing his mind abandoned, the wolf got up and forced his body into the routine he knew to be a surefire way of stalling the thinking process – he laid into his punch bag with all that was left in him after the vigorous couple of days Kenzi had put him through. His boxing time was, however, cut mercifully short when he heard someone's persistent fist drumming against his door. He covered the distance in several long strides and flung the door open intent on not being especially courteous with whoever chose to compound his far less than easy day but the intent flew out of the window at the sight of the frail form framed by the heavy door.

"Kenzi? What are you doing here? How did it go with Hale? Are you al right?" the wolf fired off the questions unable to prioritize them.

"We've reached an understanding," the girl shot back the answers putting them into an order of her own, "I am fine but tired and fast approaching hungry and that's why I've come to you."

Dyson was simply gawping at her, uncertain how to square all of that, stumped for words, and Kenzi looked suddenly shy and insecure. "I am not touching you not to force any impulses into you. Your choice is completely your own," she rattled on nervously, "I need a place to sleep safely – I mean safe from hurting anyone. And I might soon need a feed as well. Will you let me in?"

Even without succubus compulsion those enormous transparent eyes, accentuated by the slightly smudged kohl, made it exceptionally hard to kick their owner out – Dyson knew himself caving despite trying to bring Hale into the equation in a confused murmur.

"We both care for Hale and I would normally be mortified over what we have been doing behind his back but as I've said already, these are not normal circumstances, D-man, it's about my survival and possibly others' lives on the line too. I have feelings for Hale but I also have urges I can't fight or postpone," she was sounding increasingly desperate, practically sweating in fear that the wolf might decide to play it noble and turn her down, but then she looked up and saw something she hadn't noticed before – Dyson's aura burning such a bright hot-red for her as she had never seen in her short succubus existence, not in the inebriated throng in the Dal, not around Hale at his most enthusiastic about her new fae persona. Kenzi bunched her hand into a fist so as not to touch the shifter's skin with a single finger-tip and pressed it gently against his heart.

"You will let me stay, will you?" she whispered, weak with sudden relief and feeling something warm spreading throughout her body and soul. As if sensing that her knees were not holding straight Dyson picked her up and carried her across the room, a little unsteady on his own two legs, to deposit on his bed. "You can stay as long as you need," he finally verbalized his invitation, "and take what you need."

Kenzi's hands were still little fists against his chest as she shook her head slowly, "I've already taken too much recently, don't want to hurt you further. Can we just go to sleep now? Though, frankly I might wake up earlier than is the Kenzi-way for a spot of pre-breakfast."

Dyson mirrored her arched smile, relieved more than he cared to admit to himself by her un-succubus plan, and let another admission fly before he could fully register its significance, "Funny, I always thought if we ever made love I would be the one to worry about hurting you, not the other way round."

"You thought of making love to me?" Kenzi asked zeroing in on his words lighting-fast and was rewarded with the sight of a sheepish Dyson.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

In what was deemed to be the wee hours in the human-succubus household, which is around 9 am, Kenzi crept up the creaky stairs of their shacky house, her system pleasantly full with wolf-chi and pancakes they had concocted for the early fortifying meal, which the shifter clearly needed. Once in her room, she shucked her yesterday's outfit, took a quick shower, more for the sake of looking freshly showered than out of any actual need after the one she had already had at Dyson's loft and with Dyson's complete cooperation, slipped into her pajamas and went downstairs to the kitchen to present an air-tight morning Kenzi look to the other two occupants of the ramshackle building.

"Slept well?" Lauren smiled at her from behind the kitchen island, "I am whipping up some waffles. Are you hungry?"

Kenzi winced internally having just hit on the only crack in her immaculate front but had to graciously accept the offer and show some due appetite. "Sure, have I ever been not hungry? Only when I am too hammered to be anything but hammered. Alcohol is the only thing that takes precedence over my stomach needs, with waffles a close second," she babbled dismally hoping a ravenous Bo would make a sizeable dent in the stock of waffles the good doctor had already filled the plates with.

"Speaking about needs," her bestie's voice asked from the door, "How did it go with Hale? We didn't hear you come in last night and conjectured it should have been quite a talking-it-out session. Anyways, you look quite well-fed, Kenz." Bo peered closely into the blank little face that, despite some embarrassed confusion, seemed positively glowing.

"Did you get a feed from him?" Lauren came up to them, wiping her hands on the apron tied casually around her usual sober dress and giving her lover a quick lip-brush, "You know we were worried on that score, it's been a while since your last significant feed with some scraps you picked up during your training at the Dal thrown in. That's obviously not enough to sustain you. One of the reasons we all pushed you to come clean with Hale."

At that point Kenzi briefly experienced an unexpected affinity with a fat home cat who had presumptuously jumped onto a perilously thin stretch of a fence, surrounded by all kinds of nettles and brambles and other prickly bushes, and was now swaying wildly with an imminent nasty fall in the offing, whichever side she went.

"Well, I did talk to Hale and now he is completely in the loop… And absolutely alive for that … right as rain if that's what you're interested in knowing," she drew out the prologue while madly weighing the options of one blatant lie versus another, "and he seemed more than happy to land a hand with my dietary requirements …"

"And?" the word came out as a synchronized gasp from her two listeners, who suddenly looked like school-girls lapping up a cherry-losing story.

"And as I had managed to snack heartily on a dude I picked at the Dal the other night before our half-assed council of war," Kenzi went on in a rush settling for the lie less open to an easy verification, "and I am still quite sated, so I decided not to risk it with someone I care so much for and took a rain-check on my siren's services. Can't you see that?! I am the only succubus playing hard-to-get?"

Bo gave a sisterly giggle while Lauren shook her head with a dawn of a doubting look on her face. "I don't know what is holding you back with Hale," the blonde reproached softly, "If you can feed from a random fae with no lethal results, you can feed from Hale. And I am totally convinced he'd rather take a certain risk than have you engaging in sexual activity with other fae."

Before Kenzi could think up a suitably sensible response her bff had already wrapped herself around the doctor's slim figure and was drawing her back to the waffles and away from the forlorn little succubus. "Cut her some slack, baby," the brunette was whispering into Lauren's ear veiled by blonde locks, "She needs time to settle into this. Small wonder she finds it easier to try her wings with a stranger – less pressure, less fear, less responsibility."

"To me it looks much more like she's sabotaging her own relationship with Hale," Lauren whispered back with a note of deprecation and not quiet enough for the youngest girl not to catch her words, which hit her like a ton of bricks. Kenzi had to lean against the sink, thoughts and images jigging it out in her turmoil of a mind. Was there a grain of truth in what the doctor had just said? Could she be really undermining her romance, the one both she and Hale had taken such a long route towards? Whatever conclusions she might have come to were scattered by the slam of the front door and the cheery voice of the very devil who had recently been the centre of the girls' convo.

"Hello, ladies!" the siren's beaming face peeked into the kitchen, his trade-mark fedora at a jaunty angle, "Early birds catching some waffles?" He sniffed the flavoury air and made it straight to his girl-friend, "Didn't mean to barge in but I had to warn the Lil' Mama here to leave some room for dinner."

"Can you offer anything to beat the doc's creation?" Kenzi filled her tone with heavy doubt, pointing to the waffles with her chin.

"Not me, but my dad's cook can surely try," Hale hugged her slender shoulders and drew the girl closer, "I got us invited today to my parents' place. I want you to meet my family again, Kenz. And this time around _you'll_ be the most powerful fae at the table."

A moment's silence was an almost palpable entity in the room as its occupants absorbed the meaning of what had been announced and then Bo shrieked in a nearly teenage light-minded abandon that had been denied to her by her lethal nature so many years ago, "You need a dress! And shoes! And a bag! And we'll set your hair!"

"I've met them before, in a dress to die for, and shoes and a bag to match and hello, my hair and my face are a force to be reckoned with. But strangely enough, I can't recall much appreciation coming my way," Kenzi grumbled, trying and failing to summon up any enthusiasm for the event that had just found its way into her social calendar.

"It's all different now," Hale's hand slid around her waist, his warm eyes locking with the cold grey of hers, "You are different, you should feel different, no longer inferior."

"I have never felt inferior to stuck-up bastards like your father," Kenzi snapped with sudden venom and pushed the siren away with her empowered hands, "And I don't want to be re-assessed on my new fae-ness where they have failed to see me as a person."

"Hey, it's not just Kenzi meets the parents, take one hundred, you're both a succubus and a human ambassador now," Bo chipped in, feeling her friend's soul-ache with something approaching a six sense or simply with her love and sympathy for the girl, "You are something unique, something that might just turn their world upside down and rattle it to its rotten core. You can do what I was trying so long to achieve. I was the only unaligned fae and that shook the old conceited douchebags pretty badly but you can really shock them all into a couple of realizations."

Kenzi nodded slowly, sparked despite herself by Bo's sincere passion, guilty at the sight of Hale's pleading face, intent on making the required effort but not without a small act of rebellion. "I don't need a dress, the wrapping only detracts from what's inside," she stated flatly and her stomach did a flip when the siren fist-pumped the air in glee, seemingly indifferent about the outfit issue.

The hand that punched the air was soon returned to the pocket of the coat where the young siren tenderly squeezed a small velvet-covered box – a near-perfect solution to all his family problems he had hit on after a nightful of reflection. The discovery that his girl-friend had turned into a succubus had initially plunged him into a befuddlement but soon set him onto another train of thought – for the first time in the recent months Hale could see a clear path for him and the girl he loved – a path that could take them both unscathed through the labyrinth of his family's established prejudice towards a happy ever after. With an early self-inviting call to his father and a visit to a jeweler's the siren was setting a plan in motion to take Kenzi into just that direction.

A little later in the day, while the younger fae were busy implementing their meet-and-shock-the-parents project, Trick was occupied with taking inventory of his much depleted stocks of alcohol and putting together an order to make with his booze suppliers before the tavern opened for the next round of the usual merry debauchery. A soft sound of an opening door made him duck from behind the counter gripping his trusted bat which he swung unobtrusively in his hand at the sight of a tall figure in a dark suit that was looming in the middle of the empty room.

"Can I help you?" Trick asked, his tone falling somewhere in the polite range but conveying the idea of having more pressing issues than helping strangers.

The tall man took in the upturned chairs and the peanut-shell strewn floors with a haughty look before settling finally on the proprietor of the place. "Yes, you can," his voice came out in an unexpected tenor, "I am looking for a succubus, for _the_ succubus. And I would presume we both know I am not talking about Aiofe."

**Author's Note: Thanks for all the reviews i've been getting and Happy belated New Year to all of you! Hope the weather is not too hard on you! I am currently having an autumn of a winter ;( **

**Also, I've had a mightily interesting idea pitched at me by RealityDidMen about having the girls stuck in their reversed roles as the endgame. So, i am putting it up to the popular vote: Should Bo and Kenzi be returned to their initial selves? Plus one more question thrown in :Which one of the characters is to die? (Because at least one has to and i have an idea about that but would like to know yours).**


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

In her dark skin-tight pants and a see-through top, partially reduced in its revealing quality by a corset, with rebellious streaks of deep blue in her hair Kenzi tried to look her most arrogant. Hale, on the other hand, was literally radiating a proud enjoyment. "I have always known my girl is a stunner but now I am the happiest siren ever," he leaned in to whisper in her ear before pushing the door open for her and letting her into the monumental Santiago family residence.

"I can make a list of places I'd rather be right now," Kenzi mumbled and visualized an unrolling parchment meters long with Dyson's loft, the Dal and her favourite shoe-shop in the top three . "You are not too silly with glee to forget what we have talked about?" she changed tack, tugging Hale's sleeve, "No mention of Bo's loss of fae-dom, you've done enough damage by blabbing to your high-ranking daddy about me but he mustn't know about Bo's current state."

"How can I forget what Trick would've had tattooed onto my forehead if he had his way," the man gave an easy smile, "We'll keep the story down to the least detailed possibly. A half-demented fairy messing with your humanity and projecting your bestie's powers onto you in an unfortunate drunken incident."

"Unfortunate?" Kenzi's eyebrows shot up teasingly, "I thought you were feeling pretty fortunate about getting a succubus for your current squeeze."

"I mean unfortunate as far as such an old-school fae as my father is concerned. For him, a human becoming fae is … well… unthought-of," Hale glossed over the alternative term he could see the head of the Zamora clan coming up with.

"A freak? An abomination?" the girl suggested helpfully.

"Let's not fight over something my father might think but I totally don't," Hale asked pleadingly and resorted to a well-oiled sensual technique. He fluidly took possession of her slender wrist and pressed his lips to her palm, sending soft tickles up the inner side of her arm. "Oh, Lil' Mama, I wish we were somewhere secluded and with soft horizontal surfaces," he purred into the tender skin of her hand, "Is my little succubus a bit better at self-control? Forget it, I actually don't care, I'd take my chances anyway."

Kenzi's look softened as she put her free hand on his cheek gently and brushed his mouth with hers. "But here we are, on a social mission and the shit is soon to be thrown onto the fan, in spades," she replied.

"As soon as the shit is duly fanned, I am so going to take advantage of your natural urges," the siren straightened to his considerable height and looked admiringly at the small woman in front of him, "Even if I have to have an ambulance on stand-by".

Kenzi was still smiling at him as her mind was racing through the flip-book of images his words had suggested and, in the end, found the whole sequence rather disturbing. She was reasonably sure she wouldn't hurt her boy-friend –what with her boosted confidence and deepened succubus awareness, not to mention a nice feed on wolf-chi she had recently received. She was also getting quite unscrupulously skillful at suppressing any residual pangs of consciousness about using her boy-friend's best friend as a recharge – her new nature taking more and more possession of her mentality and citing the basic survival instinct as the main and perfectly sufficient justification for her actions. There was, however, a new worry emerging, a new worry she was as yet having trouble identifying.

"Let's tackle one task at a time," she weakly asked and pushed the heavy door to step into the lion's den.

Sturgis was impeccably gracious in manner when he came forward to greet his son and his companion while Val remained seated in her usual languid fashion, not deigning to get up.

"Delighted to see you in our humble abode," Hale's father boomed pompously before tacking on with an arch brow-lift, "again and in a completely new quality."

"Nothing new about the quality, same poor," Val drawled disparagingly without moving a muscle apart from the ones strictly necessary to produce the venom, "the same poor street urchin meets a shop vandal look. I would have thought the unbelievable transformation should have improved your fashion sense or, at the very least, augment your boobs, Kenzi."

"Val," Hale hurried to cut in with a rebuke, "Has it been that long since we all fought side by side?"

"She was a courageous fighter but now the fight is over," the black-skinned woman flipped her wrist at the siren, "And now the little upstart is after my brother, that's a whole different kettle of fish."

"I haven't bought any bigger sized bras so far but my upper body strength's definitely increased," Kenzi hissed not satisfied with her boy-friend's defense tactic, "And unless you fancy getting some first-hand knowledge of that, be a dear and shut your big mouth, which is seriously too big. Haven't you heard of corrective lip contouring?"

Val was up in a flash of sudden movement but Hale was quicker putting himself between the two incandescent women. "The last thing we need is you, girls, snarking it out," he said looping an arm, as protective as it was restraining, around Kenzi's waist and cranking up the reproach in his stare directed at his sister.

"William Haley, ever the peace-maker in this family, the redeeming quality covering slightly for his complete lack of ambition and a tendency to slum it," Sturgis cooed trying his best not to sound too amused by the altercation.

"Are you still mad at me for stepping down from the Ash's position?" Hale frowned, the sting of his father's words tempered by the realization of how deeply that un-Santiago deed of his had wounded the old aristocrat.

"Of course not, it was just the biggest disappointment in my almost 2,000-long life," Sturgis barked and immediately switched into his polite host mode, "The dinner is ready. Let us be civilized and reserve our barbs to after the meal and explanations time." With that he courteously led the younger fae into the immaculately furnished dining-room and toward the ceremoniously set table that brought unhappy memories to the ex-human girl. The last time she had been trying to stuff morsels of food into her constricting throat in that room she was being thoroughly belittled and subtly snubbed by the owner of the mansion and his daughter while her boy-friend, a picture of confused misery, had been torn between the desire to pacify everyone and his rightful indignation at his Lil' mama humiliation.

"This time around, everything will be different," Kenzi told herself planting her behind onto the padded chair and leveling her most impudent look at the smug faces across the table from her, "And not because Hale said so and not because I am a fae now. Just because I won't let them."

The dinner kicked off peacefully enough with Hale's father expressing his polite amazement at the recent developments and referring to Kenzi's change as an unheard-of occurrence worthy of fae annals. The details of the said occurrence were vaguely described by Kenzi in the terms agreed and rehearsed before and for a short while the four fae, gathered around the table, took a respite to enjoy the exquisite food and the fragrant wine. Things, however, were starting to heat up over the desserts when Sturgis seemed to run out of his slim deposits of good will and approached the issue from a slightly different angle.

"Your miraculous joining the fae, girl, has a certain obvious upside as regards my son's reputation," he drawled taking a sip of his wine.

"The reputation practically ruined by him dating a human, you mean?" Kenzi inquired with deceiving meekness.

"Absolutely," Sturgis was stuck-up too high to pick on the sarcasm, "Not that dating a succubus is much of an improvement for a fae of his standing, you do realize that you have miles to go and tons to learn the ways of the fae to make yourself acceptable in our circles, starting with the way you dress. It might be alright for your fellow succubus Bo to prance around with her female attributes on full display, she is unaligned and without a particular social standing but if you are still Hale's partner, you'll have to instill some decency into your head and into your wardrobe."

"Whatever body parts of hers Bo might have on display, they are not what makes her unique," Kenzi replied calmly raising her own glass to her eye level and peering through the ruby-coloured liquid at the candles adorning the table, "Her courage, her sense of justice, her big heart are what make her _her_. She doesn't have a social standing among the likes of you simply because she is so above all of you."

"I should have known better than to talk disparagingly of your best friend," Santiago the senior easily admitted, "I have to say, whatever you are, Kenzi without a second name, you're certainly a faithful friend. I wonder if the same can be said about you as a girl-friend."

"What are you talking about, father?" Hale asked almost choking on his wine and looking around the table in surprise.

"No idea if she was any good in the sack before but now she is a sexual predator, dummy," Val relished the opportunity of cutting into the conversation she was starting to enjoy, "You really think she's gonna stick to a one-course meal, that is to you exclusively, to sustain heer new nature?"

A strange little smile was curling Kenzi's lips as she stopped examining the contents of her glass to splash them with a flourish into the other woman's face. "There is a difference between a born slut and a succubus, Val," she informed her sputtering opponent, "which is, succubi need sex to survive while sluts screw around because they are sluts. Me the former, you the latter. Case in point."

"That's it, I've had enough," Hale jumped to his feet looming over the table, his usually relaxed face clouding into an expression of genuine anger, "I've brought Kenzi here because I believed we can finally bury the hatchet and try to be civil with each other, but you both are not only looking down on humans, you're looking down on everyone who is not you."

"And what are you going to do about it, son?" Sturgis interrupted him with the tranquil air of someone who could read his child well enough not to be overly worried.

The siren took a sharp inhale of breath realizing that three pairs of eager eyes were watching him waiting for his answer with practically equal degrees of interest.

"We're leaving, come one, Kenzi," he finally managed out, pulling the girl by the arm, "And we're not setting foot in this house until you come to your senses and at least try to learn to judge people not by their species but by who they are."

"Beautiful but lame," Val commented into her brother's retreating back wiping the wine drops off her face with a napkin.

"You'll be back when you simmer down," Sturgis offered calmly, "We are you family, you heritage and your future."

At the door Hale, who had caught his last words, turned back sharply back and sighed with sincere regret, "You might well be the first and the second but I don't want a future like you."

**A/N: Wow, this chapter really came out much longer than I'd expected and is actually a bit of a filler and a mood-setter. Enormous thanks to everybody who took their time to answer my questions. The vote has come in loud and clear and I am happy to say that you (the majority of you) and I are almost unanimously on the same wavelength as to this story and its characters' future.**


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

"I meant what I said," Hale strode up to the car, parked in a side alley half a block away from the Santiago residence and jerked the door open for Kenzi to get in, "We are not coming back until they both learn to behave."

"Oh, you're so intimidating, Haley," the girl was in no mood to be supportive and planted her heels stubbornly into the soft dirt of the alley, "And you think that they'll be soon guilt-ridden because of their bad behaviour out and will change their ways when they are sufficiently starved of our society and start missing your pretty face and my sweet temper."

"Any patented methods how to make my father less of a fascist, Kenz?" the siren huffed back, "team building exercises? Human-tolerance seminars?"

That shut Kenzi up as the only suggestions she could come up with contained words not spoken in polite society and lacking a constructive aspect.

Unable to keep up a bitchy tone, Hale half turned to put his hands onto her shoulders and leaned a bit to look straight into her majestic eyes. "They eventually came to respect Bo," he reminded mildly.

"Bo is a born fae and she is of royal blood while I am an ex-human, street-produced at that. Human or succubus, I am too downmarket for their exquisite taste," the girl remarked with a noticeable lack of bitterness that surprised her own ears, "Their loss, actually."

"And I don't give a damn," Hale gave her his warmest smile, "You are my future, not them. If they never haul their asses out of their version of the ivory tower – I don't care, if it will take centuries for them to become better fae – I 'll wait. With you time at my side will fly."

"You kinda changed your tune, siren," Kenzi's lashes fluttered down to hide the thunderous expression in her eyes, "From 'we need to keep my family sweet, they are my family after all' to practically 'marry me, I don't need anyone else'. Not that I complain about the new tune, but is it in any way connected with my elongated life span? Now I've got enough longevity in me to make your future."

Hale had the decency to blush a bit and look down for a thout-gathering moment. "I loved you as a human just as much as I love you now, your transformation did nothing to change the way I feel about you," he finally said in a subdued tone, "But I won't deny it, Kenz, now that I am not dreading losing you, the prospects are much brighter, you becoming fae has swept aside the only hurdle that was in our way. And don't expect me not to be happy about it. Nonetheless, if tomorrow we find Dar and you are back to being who you really are, my only regret will be I wasted our time together today on those two thick-headed dumbasses."

Despite herself, the girl was impressed by his honesty and she put her arms around the man's waist and pressed herself to him, basking in his warmth. "I am sorry for being a bitch, Hale," she murmured into his shirt guiltily, her mind dwelling on another hurdle her new succu-status had thrown in their way, though unbeknown to her official boy-friend. She felt the siren tense in the silence that descended on them, the silence full of the us-said and far from comfortable. Finally, Hale hooked a finger under her chin to make her look up and asked, mock facetious, "What? Aren't you going to say it back to me? The 'I love you whatever happens' thing?"

"I love you," Kenzi replied obediently and quickly tacked on a non sequitur, "And right now I need a fix."

"Wow! That is direct, Lil' Moma. Right here? In the car? Has my lucky time finally come?" Hale's spirits obviously soared as his eyes generated a twinkle to forget all worries.

"I am actually after an alcohol-containing type of a fix and feeling Dal-bound," Kenzi smiled slyly, "But as a succubus I am easily swayed by well-grounded persuasion."

"Let me ground it for you," Hale used his natural vocal assets to turn his voice into a seductive husky drawl as he gently pushed the girl into the open car and hopped into the driver's seat, his mind racing through suitably secluded locations in the vicinity.

#######

Dyson snapped the file shut with a satisfied grunt, over for the day with the part of the work he hated most – pushing pen over paper made him think back with longing to the good old times of reporting to the Blood King over a mug of ale and in one succinct sentence summing up the result of the mission. Hale had begged off for the day citing urgent family business, which the shifter suspected had a lot to do with a certain deceptively fragile-looking girl, and once his mind was free of paperwork, it hit straight onto the subject. After a few tortuous minutes of imagining what kind of urgent Kenzi-related business his partner could be occupying himself with, Dyson sprang from behind his desk in an attempt to shake off the imagery. Bursting with anger-generated energy, Dyson pushed the door of the station open, almost dislodging it from its hinges and walked out. The crisp air outside served as a splash of cold water to his burning face but his mind was still in turmoil. His last night with Kenzi, the words he had blurted out before he could bite his tongue drove a couple of realizations home that his subconscious had been churning up to strike him down him with the second work could no longer serve as a distraction.

The love the shifter had got so used to over the past years, that he was already thinking of as a given in his life and that he could no longer find in his confused heart, the gnawing pangs of conscience he had been pushing to the back of his mind about the way he had been acting towards Hale, and, taking the pride of place, a tender fluttering feeling that had made him offer himself up to the little succubus, risking to lose the people he loved, losing himself – the knot of emotions was playing merry hell with his emotionally unhinged soul.

The wolf wished he had opted for his bike that day – a nice bit of racing through the outskirts might have helped to de-cluttered his congested head. He gripped the car door and yanked it open – the car at least could get him to the place to drown his emotional whirlwind in some choice potent stuff and to hell with the indecently early hours.

####

"Do you think the guys are doing as well as we are?" Bo's lush lips unpeeled themselves from the tender skin of the doctor's clavicle to ask.

"I doubt it," the blonde's voice came out haltingly, "No one can be doing as well as we are."

"Seems like I've taken Kenzi's earlier advice and learnt to enjoy my shit," the brunette smiled archly, "Besides, my juices might be gone, but the skill and the experience are still there…"

"And much appreciated," Lauren agreed heartily. "I have to admit this whole swap business has provided us with a couple of unique opportunities."

"Make it a good baker's dozen of opportunities," Bo stretched her arms above her head in a languid motion of the rightfully tired, "And I've thoroughly enjoyed every single one of them."

"Do you think I could make a good human?" she added in an out-of-the-blue fashion after a short pause of catching breath.

"You've always been a good human, your heart has been human, your actions have been human … and humane," the doctor replied in a quiet voice, "You have always been so much more than just your species, nothing has changed, my love."

"I am thinking …," Bo started again tentatively, "that we will most certainly catch the fairy trickster and get him to swap us back, right? I mean, come on, we took down Garuda, outstripped the Ash and the Morrigan numerous times. But speaking hypothetically, if we failed and I remained a human …? What would it change?"

"Nothing much," the doctor shot back cheerfully, "We would be still having mind-blowing unrestrained human sex and Kenzi the succubus would be doing all the butt-kicking in your place whenever we needed some girl muscle. Ok, maybe you'd have to cut down on alcohol intake – your human head seems more hangover-prone."

"Speaking of which," Bo flipped over the sheets and jumped up to her full-length naked glory, "I'm ready to test and contest your claim, doctor. Right now, at the Dal?"

Lauren wriggled her own way from under the covers. "As far as you promise to exercise some unaccustomed moderation …," she replied with a stammer, her mind overloaded with the visual in front of her, but as soon as the said visual got covered by the red kimono she got more of a grip and hastened over to the dressing table to pick up a small box sitting there.

"And a little caution," the blonde went on, "this is something I whipped up on Trick's sage advice – the secretions of skunk ape I used to infiltrate the Hecuba prison, it will help to mask your human smell. The fae patrons of the Dal don't need to know anything about it."

When an hour later the two women made their entrance into the Dal's main room, their hands locked, their faces honeymoon happy, they were greeted with a surprising silence accounted for by a near complete lack of clientele. The only two fae to grace the tavern that evening were standing at the counter and looking around with near identical astonished expressions.

"Where is everyone?" Kenzi hailed the other women after Hale waved his hi, "We've just come and found the place empty."

"And where is Trick?" Bo frowned, more concerned about her grand-father than about the incredibly slow night or the consequent low takings at the bar.

The door swung open again behind them as the wolf strode in and immediately scrunched his nose, clearly more affected by the smell than by the silent Dal.

"Who has been mud-fighting with a gorilla low on personal hygiene?" Dyson inquired rather rhetorically, unerringly pinning the blame as well as his accusing gaze on Bo.

"That's my camouflage to pass for a fae," the brunette explained, "And there seems no one to camouflage me from."

"The rare moment I lament my enhanced sense of smell," the shifter mumbled and took an inconspicuous step away from the women, "And where is Trick? I would take a sniff around, but my nose is shocked out of condition."

"'l can nip down to his lair and check," Kenzi volunteered, eager to escape the slight discomfort at the sight of both her lovers in the confined and inconveniently depopulated space. Before she could make it to the backroom, however, an impressive tall hooded figure emerged from there and straight into the focus of everyone's attention.

"Let me enlighten you on a few points," a voice came out of the hood rather high-pitched but still awe-striking, "The tavern is empty because I ordered so, the Blood King is not to interrupt us and I am finally here at the end of my long quest."

"Who the hell are you to give orders at the Light fae way station? And what's your quest? For a cheap bottle of single malt?" Bo stepped forward, sassy and initiative by habit, but was immediately shielded by the shifter as Kenzi, in her turn, moved forward to position herself between her bestie and the stranger.

The hood went down to reveal a pleasant middle aged face with familiar bright brown eyes and a sharp nose, the eyebrows raised in open amusement at the brunette's display of fearlessness.

"I'm so much over the divide of the Light and the Dark and over those who initiated it, child, my power is older than this realm and I've come for my daughter," the man answered, removing Kenzi from his way in an eye-defying fluid motion and coming closer to Bo.


End file.
